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Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

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Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#171

Post by doublecouponday »

pault wrote: post #38
shawn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Look at how many plates I can juggle at once!” “Aren’t you just trying to walk to the store?” “Look! I added a fifth! Everyone do this now!”

I don't understand your analogy. What is walking to the store without juggling any plates in web development? I'm not aware of any stack that allows you to write styles, markup, business logic, and database queries in a single language.

In C#, you can almost do everything in a single language (linq to sql, model binding). You still need extensible application markup language (XAML) for the view.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#172

Post by apersona »

SCdF wrote: post #3

> when I told other software people I’m a web developer, I got treated like shit. I was a lower class of coder because I wasn’t “solving cool problems” because making web sites is easy. Of all the stupid arrogant awfulness in tech that has crossed my path this one is definitely high on the list of the most baffling. Web dev is the hardest and most intimidating dev work I've ever done, by a country mile. (Whether that…

What other work have you done though?

From my experience, it seems like a lot of web dev people struggle with OS/Compilers/Embedded/Robotics work, but people who don't struggle with OS/Compilers/Embedded/Robotics work tend to handle web dev just fine.

Why is that? The only explanation I can think of is because the work is easier (easier, not trivial).

(Note: I don't think a web developer (or anyone) should be considered a "lower class" of coder, but saying web dev is the hardest and most intimidating dev work feels untrue).

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#173

Post by RandomInteger4 »

gameswithgo wrote: post #119
GijsjanB wrote: post #118

I think everybody who writes HTML, CSS and JS for a living experiences this. For me it's the never ending jokes about "JS was written in 9 days" and remarks on how easy it is to fix a problem, because "it's just CSS". I compare it too subtle discrimination. I am a white male and I won't pretend to know how it feels to be discriminated, but I do know how it feels too fight the uphill battle of condescending remarks. A…

Javascript being sub optimal makes what you do harder, which implies you are smarter. You aren't being made fun of, the language is. And CSS is harder than programming!

Can you elaborate on how javascript is sub-optimal?

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#174

Post by bm1362 »

ender7 wrote: post #70
iwangulenko wrote: post #20

As someone running a technical recruitment agency, I can assure you that it is true that someone having built stuff in Clojure is more likely to be considered as a good engineer than someone who did JQuery all the time. Recruiters use an intuitive approach to conditional probability. Given only the info alone (if someone did JQuery or Clojure) exposes you to two bell curves, with the X-axis being "programming ability…

It's true that, based on my interviewing experience, candidates with only a jQuery background are unlikely to have the skills to cut it developing large-scale software at a large-scale company, which is what I am hiring for. At the moment I interview mostly front-end candidates, and it takes a lot of sifting to find qualified hires. However, the implicit companion assumption that a resume with lots of clojure experie…

This is my experience hiring Clojure engineers in a small startup- things became dogmatic and opinionated at a time when we were existentially challenged with building a product.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#175

Post by bastijn »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #165
bastijn wrote: post #13

I think the negative comments on webdev come from the php era where websites were not much more than information portals. Nowadays webdev is more about web apps, considerably harder to create and maintain. In addition the usage expanded so scale became a thing. Over time it is more that the apps traditionally seen as "true programming" moved to the web but the stigma is only starting to fade. On the writing style; ho…

The author seems to be female, so "fangirl" maybe isn't so out of place.

Even so, fanboys, fangirls, it is all said in demeaning manner in this context. I don’t think anybody would feel proud to be categorized in that group of the authors collection.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#176

Post by chubot »

idontpost wrote: post #68
Zelphyr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has slogged through it for 20 years, I wouldn't say I've earned much other than to realize that its all an even bigger mess than what it used to be. The solutions people come up with to combat it (frameworks, JSX, CSS-in-JS) only exacerbate the complexity in my opinion. I truly feel like we're headed in the wrong direction when it comes to web development. I haven't figured out what the right direction…

> I haven't figured out what the right direction is yet, short of going back to the drawing board with HTML. That's almost certainly what's needed. The fundamental structure of the HTML-CSS-JS triad is the problem that all this complexity tries to abstract around. Separation of concerns is only good if you're separating the right concerns. Back when web pages were really PAGES (ie documents), the Content-Styling-Inte…

There are some sites that are applications, and there are some sites that are documents.

I'll go as far as to say that will never change. Applications are only one part of the web; the other parts matter too.

I care more about reading documents on the web, and I'm glad it has a nice simple way of presenting them (HTML) and styling them (CSS).

CSS works OK as long as you aren't trying to control things pixel-for-pixel, which is not what it's meant for. It obviously could be better, but the problem is not easy by any means.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#177

Post by blub »

SCdF wrote: post #3

> when I told other software people I’m a web developer, I got treated like shit. I was a lower class of coder because I wasn’t “solving cool problems” because making web sites is easy. Of all the stupid arrogant awfulness in tech that has crossed my path this one is definitely high on the list of the most baffling. Web dev is the hardest and most intimidating dev work I've ever done, by a country mile. (Whether that…

Honestly I don't think web developers will ever be respected, even if every other type of developer disappears from the face of the Earth.

That's because of:

* an over-inflated sense of importance (see the comparison with the moon landing)

* aggressiveness (see the endless statements about killing the desktop, mobile, etc)

* low barrier to entry and high population numbers to entry resulting in lots of ignorance

* attention deficit (see the endless churn in frameworks, libraries, solutions)

* and poor technical craftsmanship (at the end of the day, the solutions offered have poor performance and poor platform integration). This is justified by the fact that these poor technologies are making webdevs more productive.

Not all of the above apply to back-end webdev, those devs are more relaxed. Unfortunately they're being assimilated by the front-end.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#178

Post by GijsjanB »

msds wrote: post #144
GijsjanB wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 0 years hiring people, my experience is this. The language(s) you write code in don't mean a thing. It's the ecosystem. I'm a JS programmer, but that is not why you should hire me, it's my experience with the DOM, HTTP, indexeddb, File API, documentFragment, Fetch API, TreeWalker, NPM, WebGL, interactive SVG, the pros and cons of React, when to use Redux, Basic login, NGINX, Docker, etc, etc, etc. My point is…

You just named a lot of things. Why should I hire you?

Ok, the list is distracting. I mean, experience with web dev's ecosystem is more important than the languages you can write code in. Of course a list on it's own is useless, it should be supported with actual projects (hopefully some in production).

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#180

Post by blub »

themagician wrote: post #35
SCdF wrote: post #3

> when I told other software people I’m a web developer, I got treated like shit. I was a lower class of coder because I wasn’t “solving cool problems” because making web sites is easy. Of all the stupid arrogant awfulness in tech that has crossed my path this one is definitely high on the list of the most baffling. Web dev is the hardest and most intimidating dev work I've ever done, by a country mile. (Whether that…

The inflated sense of ego associated with “saving the world” and “solving tough problems” has almost completely turned me off from tech, in the Bay Area in particular. My problem isn’t with the sentiment—it’s that 99 out of 100 times it’s pure bullshit. There are a few people out their doing really amazing things, but the vast majority of people who have big egos aren’t the people working on that stuff. Tech is the n…

One doesn't need to save the world. But not making it worse through ads and ubiquitous tracking would be nice.

So is not pushing negative externalities inherent to web apps to customers just because it makes web devs more productive.

Today's web is a monster.

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