3 ms·

My advice is that whenever you become confident/comfortable in your current work, that's when you have to change team or company. Whenever it gets easy, it mean

My advice is that whenever you become confident/comfortable in your current work, that's when you have to change team or company. Whenever it gets easy, it means you have stopped learning. I agree with what was said about tools; it doesn't make you a better programmer to know all the latest ES6 features and frameworks. It's tough to say. Given a choice between being a JS ninja capable of hammering out http://www.track-trump.com/ http://www.track-trump.com/ in a week, or a generalist with a wide variety of skills, the former is so much more valuable from a monetary standpoint that it'd be hard to turn it down. It's less satisfying, and you end up less capable in certain respects, but it all depends which axis you want to optimize along.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Offtopic, but I have to say - I love the site you linked. This should be a standard thing done about every politician in power.
- sillysaurus3 10y ago
  It's the brainchild of Sam, Greg, Alec, and Peter. https://twitter.com/sama/status/822494523959877632 https://twitter.com/sama/status/822494523959877632 Greg is the JS ninja I was referring to. https://twitter.com/sama/status/822500368797966336 https://twitter.com/sama/status/822500368797966336
metaphorm 10y ago
is that really a good example of highly focused coding skills? it looks like a very standard web site that any web developer familiar with modern frontend tools could hammer out in a week. I don't see anything there besides some content presentation stuff. Am I missing something more interesting? When I think of "JS ninja" I think of sites with really complicated UI, like multipart forms with lots of validation, or interesting map layer based tools, or browser games or something like that.
jondubois 10y ago
It's not necessarily about being a generalist. You can move between different companies within the same industry and get highly specialized knowledge within a specific domain. Going through a few companies trains you to think creatively and consider more different approaches.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Offtopic, but I have to say - I love the site you linked. This should be a standard thing done about every politician in power.

sillysaurus3 10y ago
It's the brainchild of Sam, Greg, Alec, and Peter. https://twitter.com/sama/status/822494523959877632 https://twitter.com/sama/status/822494523959877632 Greg is the JS ninja I was referring to. https://twitter.com/sama/status/822500368797966336 https://twitter.com/sama/status/822500368797966336

metaphorm 10y ago

is that really a good example of highly focused coding skills? it looks like a very standard web site that any web developer familiar with modern frontend tools could hammer out in a week. I don't see anything there besides some content presentation stuff. Am I missing something more interesting? When I think of "JS ninja" I think of sites with really complicated UI, like multipart forms with lots of validation, or interesting map layer based tools, or browser games or something like that.

jondubois 10y ago

It's not necessarily about being a generalist. You can move between different companies within the same industry and get highly specialized knowledge within a specific domain. Going through a few companies trains you to think creatively and consider more different approaches.