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Front-End Developer Handbook

frontendmasters.com

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Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#61

Post by mrisoli »

Blackstone4 wrote: post #15
anon1094 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you're getting down voted, but this is absolutely correct and more specification is needed when it comes to "front-end". I come from a traditional front-end background (for web) and I send many front-end jobs for my company RemoteLeads as well. Front-end is the most fragmented programming job category and I'm sure it's the one that gets the most applicants. Companies will say they're looking fo…

I read the Jerry Low article and comments. On the front-end, I feel like you can group people into two categories: - Front-end/UI designer - UI specialist with HTML, CSS, wireframing and some JS skills - Front-end developer - JS engineer typically leveraging JS frameworks and Bootstrap In the comments section of Jerry's article, it feels like there are a bunch of HTML + CSS specialist who need to re-position themselv…

Definitions are complicated, it feels like they should be static when the definition of what a front-end developer does is always changing as technology comes up with different mediums like smartphones, watches, VR, etc.

I've thought about this a lot and I would say something like this:

A front-end/UI designer is concerned about the _user_ interface with the application, that is, how a user interacts and utilizes an application.

A front-end developer is concerned about the _client_ interface with the application, such as what browsers support what and how you can work with that, screen sizes and how to best utilize them(can't have a full word processor and keyboard in a smartwatch), how do you flow data through the client in a way that it doesn't hog the system's memory or makes everything slow, tradeoffs between server-side and client-side rendering, caching, optimization, optimistic UI, unstable connections, progressive enhancement and graceful degradation, and much more.

Of course, this doesn't mean a front-end developer/designer won't have to dabble in both roles eventually.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#62

Post by nickthemagicman »

jpd- wrote: post #18

"A developer who can code the front-end, back-end, API, and database isn't as absurd as it once was (excluding visual design, interaction design, and CSS). Still mythical in my opinion, but not as uncommon as it once was." I see this attitude expressed a lot among people who identify as "front end" developers and it seems like psychological projection to me. I would count myself and a number of close friends and asso…

Are you able to fully configure webpack? Do you know how to animate with CSS? Do you know Greensock? Three.js? Babel? The differences between ES5,6,7? Co.js? ES generators? Webassembly?

Being able to hack out a little Js and css to make an Enterprise dashboard imo does not a front end or full stack developer make.

I have one of those 'college degree' thingys and I'll tell you something....imo CORRECT front end development is way more challenging than back end development.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#63

Post by olavgg »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #62
jpd- wrote: post #18

"A developer who can code the front-end, back-end, API, and database isn't as absurd as it once was (excluding visual design, interaction design, and CSS). Still mythical in my opinion, but not as uncommon as it once was." I see this attitude expressed a lot among people who identify as "front end" developers and it seems like psychological projection to me. I would count myself and a number of close friends and asso…

Are you able to fully configure webpack? Do you know how to animate with CSS? Do you know Greensock? Three.js? Babel? The differences between ES5,6,7? Co.js? ES generators? Webassembly? Being able to hack out a little Js and css to make an Enterprise dashboard imo does not a front end or full stack developer make. I have one of those 'college degree' thingys and I'll tell you something....imo CORRECT front end develo…

There is no "correct" front end development. You need to say no or stop to all the noise coming from everywhere.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#64

Post by olavgg »

brandall10 wrote: post #50
swebs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the anti-Microsoft sentiment didn't just pop up out of nowhere. I've been burned by Microsoft's bullshit so many times that I will go out of my way to deny them any semblance of power, lest they try to leverage it for some new anti-consumer vendor lock-in scheme. How's that old saying go? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 47 times, shame on me.

Anti-MS sentiment is related to its business practices and perhaps dev community itself, not tooling. I've never seen a person who actually is familiar with Typescript say anything negative about it, and it has huge uptake in the open source community.

Oh Microsoft has also been involved with tooling, you know how they sold that SOAP crap. They made it complex by purpose, so you had to buy tools to work with SOAP.

Ref Book: The New Kingmakers

"It’s hard to feel too sorry for SOAP’s creators, however — particularly if what one Microsoft developer told Tim O’Reilly is true: “It was actually a Microsoft objective to make [SOAP] sufficiently complex that only the tools would read and write this stuff,” he explained, “and not humans.”"

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#65

Post by nickthemagicman »

olavgg wrote: post #63
nickthemagicman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to fully configure webpack? Do you know how to animate with CSS? Do you know Greensock? Three.js? Babel? The differences between ES5,6,7? Co.js? ES generators? Webassembly? Being able to hack out a little Js and css to make an Enterprise dashboard imo does not a front end or full stack developer make. I have one of those 'college degree' thingys and I'll tell you something....imo CORRECT front end develo…

There is no "correct" front end development. You need to say no or stop to all the noise coming from everywhere.

You're saying there's no best practices? No lessons learned from a decade of front end development. That seems inaccurate to me.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#66

Post by manigandham »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #62
jpd- wrote: post #18

"A developer who can code the front-end, back-end, API, and database isn't as absurd as it once was (excluding visual design, interaction design, and CSS). Still mythical in my opinion, but not as uncommon as it once was." I see this attitude expressed a lot among people who identify as "front end" developers and it seems like psychological projection to me. I would count myself and a number of close friends and asso…

Are you able to fully configure webpack? Do you know how to animate with CSS? Do you know Greensock? Three.js? Babel? The differences between ES5,6,7? Co.js? ES generators? Webassembly? Being able to hack out a little Js and css to make an Enterprise dashboard imo does not a front end or full stack developer make. I have one of those 'college degree' thingys and I'll tell you something....imo CORRECT front end develo…

That's a nice set of buzzwords but nothing complicated. Babel is just a transpiler. ES versions are like any other programming language with versions, use Babel to solve. ES generators are just yield functions that have been around for decades and finally getting to JS. What about webassembly? It's just a compilation target for other languages and delivery format for the browser.

And why is configuring webpack always mentioned as a complicated thing? If you can code all the above then why cant you make a simple javascript app return an object following a schema with an input, output and list of loaders?

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#67

Post by Can_Not »

baron816 wrote: post #41
swirepe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you're conflating using a type system with writing large classes.

At question is whether the benefits of static typing outweigh their costs. From my experience (purely anecdotal) static typing provides a false sense of security that encourages bad practices, thus turning the benefits of types into costs themselves.

To me, that sense of security is not false (even 90% reliable is better than 0%). And to suggest that type systems are a contributory factor to developers writing functions/classes that are too large is completely unsubstantiated.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#68

Post by nickthemagicman »

manigandham wrote: post #66
nickthemagicman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to fully configure webpack? Do you know how to animate with CSS? Do you know Greensock? Three.js? Babel? The differences between ES5,6,7? Co.js? ES generators? Webassembly? Being able to hack out a little Js and css to make an Enterprise dashboard imo does not a front end or full stack developer make. I have one of those 'college degree' thingys and I'll tell you something....imo CORRECT front end develo…

That's a nice set of buzzwords but nothing complicated. Babel is just a transpiler. ES versions are like any other programming language with versions, use Babel to solve. ES generators are just yield functions that have been around for decades and finally getting to JS. What about webassembly? It's just a compilation target for other languages and delivery format for the browser. And why is configuring webpack always…

Of course! Databases are just more complicated spreadsheets! And puppet is just scripts that configure servers. And encryption is just a few math equations that mask data.

Man when you put it that way I just realized how trivial all technology is!

Really anyone can do it without years of experience and training!

Who knows why the salaries are so high!

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#69

Post by manigandham »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #68
manigandham wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice set of buzzwords but nothing complicated. Babel is just a transpiler. ES versions are like any other programming language with versions, use Babel to solve. ES generators are just yield functions that have been around for decades and finally getting to JS. What about webassembly? It's just a compilation target for other languages and delivery format for the browser. And why is configuring webpack always…

Of course! Databases are just more complicated spreadsheets! And puppet is just scripts that configure servers. And encryption is just a few math equations that mask data. Man when you put it that way I just realized how trivial all technology is! Really anyone can do it without years of experience and training! Who knows why the salaries are so high!

I'm not sure what the point of your comment is, but the large number of 3 month bootcamps that create frontend devs does seem to show that anyone can do it.

I'm calling out the fact that the things you mentioned and the concepts behind them are not unique to frontend and certainly not even that complex. All it means is that the frontend landscape is finally catching up to traditional backend languages and dev practices. We've had compilers, multiple language versions, and environment targets for a long time. We've had functional programming, event sourcing, actor systems, immutable data, and materialized views for a long time. We've used DSLs and full programming languages to create config objects and execution paths for a long time. We've had async and multithreaded programming for a long time.

None of this is new or suddenly challenging, which goes to the original point of this thread that backend skills tend to move much easier to current frontend dev than the opposite direction because of what's involved. I'm not sure how much backend experience you have, if any, but naming assorted buzzwords and claiming that configuring webpack is complex only seems to reinforce my comments.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#70

Post by nickthemagicman »

manigandham wrote: post #69
nickthemagicman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course! Databases are just more complicated spreadsheets! And puppet is just scripts that configure servers. And encryption is just a few math equations that mask data. Man when you put it that way I just realized how trivial all technology is! Really anyone can do it without years of experience and training! Who knows why the salaries are so high!

I'm not sure what the point of your comment is, but the large number of 3 month bootcamps that create frontend devs does seem to show that anyone can do it. I'm calling out the fact that the things you mentioned and the concepts behind them are not unique to frontend and certainly not even that complex. All it means is that the frontend landscape is finally catching up to traditional backend languages and dev practic…

Actually making things happen with the technologies is alot different than being able to spout general principles on how they work on the internet.

Your trivialization of these technologies makes me think you're possibly a first/second year computer science student who's never actually worked with any of them and mainly read a modern javascript overview page on the web or a rundown in a textbook. Or just a troll!

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