6 ms·

What I find most interesting is that the majority of these technologies did not exist or were in their infancy ~7 years ago when I first moved to Silicon Valley

What I find most interesting is that the majority of these technologies did not exist or were in their infancy ~7 years ago when I first moved to Silicon Valley. Looking at this chart must be much more intimidating for a young developer today. I remember a decade ago when a front-end developer meant you handled HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Apache/PHP/MySQL. Today, there are 15 forks in the road all leading to different paths as a front-end developer.

scriptkiddie95 10y ago
As a young developer, it really is intimidating. Hard to know where to even start these days, it's overwhelming.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Does 28 still count as young? I've been doing some form of web programming for 8 or 9 years now and it's almost impossible to keep up with JS/Node/NPM/100 different poor re-implementations of 'make'. Luckily there are big enterprises that provide job security without chasing every new framework.
  - cholantesh 10y ago
    I'm 28 myself, with experience primarily in web and ETL. I'm finding that even the big orgs are doing buzzword fishing on their jobs descriptions. MV* frameworks for largely static sites and data sets, served up to small, internal audiences, etc. Strongly weighing my options for moving into another space such as embedded systems or DSP, where the problems are a bit more tangible.
    - newbear 10y ago
      I feel like I got into programming years back ( I chose JS/web focus for future job prospect reasons) because I wanted to be introverted and solve problems. Instead it's become an extroverts heaven of circlejerk-buzzword-sixfigurehunting-pretension. I kid - there are amazing people doing amazing things but maybe embedded systems or dsp is more what I'm looking for?
  - badosu 10y ago
    These days I made a project as a test for a job. It required a SPA framework, I am pretty much used to Backbone but wanted to use this opportunity to check how are the new shiny things these days. So I picked up Vue.js The architecture is pretty clean, minimalistic and well thought. Soon I realized how terrible documented most of the tools on js land are these days, it was very frustrating to see that most of the options are not well documented, so that you must find a suitable blog post or tutorial from someone that is used with all the quirks. This is not to say that the issue is with JS itself or it's ecosystem, it may be or not, but this little anecdote is what I can share from this experience. I hope this is just an exception.
- gingerbread-man 10y ago
  It doesn't really matter very much where you start. Pick something and dive in. Once you feel very comfortable with that, add another skill. Personally, I'd suggest learning a programming language first: Python, Javascript, and Ruby are all good choices. Find a book you really like in one of those languages and read it cover to cover. PS: https://eloquentjavascript.net https://eloquentjavascript.net is great, and free.
  - afarrell 10y ago
    If you want to go with python, http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/ http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/ followed by http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000754 http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000754 are both free and teach good habits on the way to backend web development.
    - sdfin 10y ago
      I think this is the link for the site of the last edition of the 2nd book you mention http://www.obeythetestinggoat.com/ http://www.obeythetestinggoat.com/
      - gingerbread-man 10y ago
        What a wonderful name for a programming book.
        afarrell 10y ago
        I actually bought a plushie goat and keep him on my desk.
- dorian-graph 10y ago
  You don't need to learn everything on there. Also, while some company may use/follow x (especially CSS methodologies), from what I've seen it's usually a poor attempt making it a lot easier to pick up.
- marknadal 10y ago
  I highly agree, and have strongly voiced "keeping things simple" with: 1. HTML4 (no special/new tags) Edit: CSS, of course (unfortunately, CSS is a pain to learn though, so get a lot of experience/experimenting) 2. Pure ES5 JavaScript (don't waste time with build-steps/compiling JS, that defeats the point/purpose - or if you want to, learn a language like ClojureScript or Elm/Haskell) 3. jQuery to manipulate the DOM (skip frameworks and stick to libraries, this will force you to actually understand JS rather than being a copy-paster. Once you have this down, build your own personalized framework to abstract things away, only then should you try experimenting with Angular/React, etc. others) 4. Notepad++ or Sublime (avoid using any terminal tools, including NodeJS, until you are comfortable with having a browser and an editor open side by side, and refreshing when making changes. Keep it simple: just files!) 5. NodeJS or PHP, GitHub for Desktop (learn basic command line use, but if something takes you more than 20 minutes to figure out, seek out a community/forum/help that is friendly and encouraging to newbs. Don't waste time on channels that make fun of you for not knowing command line.) 6. Heroku (for deploying, and having your page live to show your mom what you built) I wrote a beginner's tutorial for the first 3 items, it takes between 5 minutes to 30 minutes for people who have only played with a little bit of HTML. It teaches you how to build a ToDo app: http://gun.js.org/think.html http://gun.js.org/think.html , let me know if there is anything I can do to improve it.
  - et-al 10y ago
    CSS needs to be included. CSS is the polish that changes a proof of concept into a presentable product. There's a number of Show HN projects that I'm hesitant to invest much time in because they look like the author won't bother maintaining them months down the line. Even your nicely made tutorial has CSS. ;) btw feedback: * For some reason it wasn't evident to me that the left black box was editable and I actually interacted with the right-side wondering why nothing was happening. Perhaps use something that doesn't have an interaction so I don't try to click the button at first glance. * Found myself scrolling up and an down a lot to read the next few instructions and updating the code. If things were side by side, this would be easier. * It'd be nice to step backwards for the instructions * The pre-formatted code in the instructions is a bit small. Might be hard to read for some people
- cblock811 10y ago
  Echoing others here, definitely just pick somewhere and get started. Spending time worrying about making the "right" decision is the worst thing you can do. I made that mistake when I was teaching myself and it cost me a few weeks until I finally just picked a language and went with it.
- cm2187 10y ago
  The most important skill is to brag about using a javascript framework that no one else has heard about in order to make everyone anxious that they are has-been already.
rgovind 10y ago
And you can never be sure what questions will be asked from you during an interview, especially, since the only thing job description says is "Rockstar frontend Engineer"
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  *rockstar frontend engineer with 10+ years of experience.
- ricardobeat 10y ago
  How many of those have you done? It's usually basic JavaScript / CSS / HTML / responsive design, performance, accessibility. You don't hire a plumber by asking him about the make of his hammer.
  - dagw 10y ago
    You don't hire a plumber by asking him about the make of his hammer. You might if all the nails you have could only be used with a certain make of hammer and if learning how to use a different hammer efficiently could take several month.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ricardobeat 10y ago
      Let's not get carried away, but that's the result of your own choice to accept vendor lock-in. Like having to hire only authorised service providers. Most companies I've known are smart enough to avoid that and just hire good generalist developers, and the interviews will be shaped accordingly.
  - Beltiras 10y ago
    I've been using this exact analogy the other way around about hiring in IT. First screening is usually some HR drone scanning your resume/cv for buzzwords. HR: So, I see on your resume you have been building houses for a decade. This is a good foundation for the work we are doing. Applicant carpenter: Yes, all sorts of houses. Done both interiors and prep for concrete pouring. Fiddled a little bit with wiring on a job where the electrician needed some help. HR: Uhu. Yes. What vendor did you use for your tools? AC: Pardon? HR: Well, we have secured a really good deal on tools from Stanley. Are you familiar with their hammers? AC: (puzzled) uhn, sure. I'm not too sure what I used on my last site. For me a hammer is a hammer. It has to be a really crappy tool not to do it's work. HR: Thank you for coming in. I think you should expect a call from us sometime next week. (marks the checkbox, Not familiar with tools) Coding is usually based around learning the solution we are employing. It's a very boring problem if the solution is known beforehand. It's now knowing the tools that make you effective, it's being able to learn them that is valuable about a knowledge worker.
joatmon-snoo 10y ago
As a young'un myself (u/g senior), I think the more disturbing thing is that I see stuff that's missing (from front-end alone: ES5, ES7, Babel, Selenium, service workers, deferred dependencies, accessibility, Backbone, UI/UX, polyfills, and generally YAGNI/KISS to remind people that there are few things on the web that actually need to be SPAs). Fortunately I have no desire to do front-end work.
fizixer 10y ago
> I remember a decade ago when a front-end developer meant you handled HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Apache/PHP/MySQL. Wait a minute. If front-end developers handled Apache/PHP/MySQL too then what did back-end developers handle? I used to think front-end means client-side (HTML/CSS/Javascript) and back-end means server-side (Apache-or-nginx/PHP-or-Python-or-Ruby/MySQL-or-PostgresQL).
- mattmanser 10y ago
  Check out HN search for "front end development" from 7 years ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=front%20end%20development&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=story&dateStart=1107216000&dateEnd=1269820800 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=front%20end%20development&sort... Three pages of low vote threads with the occasional mention of front-end development. There wasn't much of a term of front-end development 7 years ago. It's a new thing. You had back-end devs who would do some funky front-end stuff with often atrocious UIs and a bunch of designers who would hack together some jQuery plugins badly. The highest voted story from 7 years ago is talking about converting PSD to HTML/CSS, which many of us back then would have sneered at being called development.
  - wheelerwj 10y ago
    Yeah, I feel like the notion of a dedicated front end engineer as oppossed to an engineer working with a contract designer is relatively new. A few years ago, I was working contract at MS, and they had this concept of DevOps which seemed so weird to me. It was like a marriage between IT and engineering. Only in the last few years has DevOps come to stand on its own as a dedicated discipline. which actually gives me some perspective for the speed at which FE tools seem be iterating. I'll have to keep that in mind moving forward.
- Washuu 10y ago
  Seven years ago when I was starting my current job that is what I was doing; which was all of it. From taking design's PSDs to turn them into markup, to programming the back end, and occasionally traveling to the data center to setup servers and networking. The "Full Stack developer plus SysOps" of trades. My job was not labeled as front end, back end, DevOps, or SysOps. We did not really use those terms that are much more common place today. Just an engineer who was wholly responsible for various web properties from end user experience to server up time.
zwieback 10y ago
Is that a sign that the good kind of consolidation hasn't happened yet or are all of these competing systems justified?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
megablast 10y ago
Front end doing MySQL? And PHP? Isn't that full stack?

scriptkiddie95 10y ago

As a young developer, it really is intimidating. Hard to know where to even start these days, it's overwhelming.

voltagex_ 10y ago
Does 28 still count as young? I've been doing some form of web programming for 8 or 9 years now and it's almost impossible to keep up with JS/Node/NPM/100 different poor re-implementations of 'make'. Luckily there are big enterprises that provide job security without chasing every new framework.
- cholantesh 10y ago
  I'm 28 myself, with experience primarily in web and ETL. I'm finding that even the big orgs are doing buzzword fishing on their jobs descriptions. MV* frameworks for largely static sites and data sets, served up to small, internal audiences, etc. Strongly weighing my options for moving into another space such as embedded systems or DSP, where the problems are a bit more tangible.
  - newbear 10y ago
    I feel like I got into programming years back ( I chose JS/web focus for future job prospect reasons) because I wanted to be introverted and solve problems. Instead it's become an extroverts heaven of circlejerk-buzzword-sixfigurehunting-pretension. I kid - there are amazing people doing amazing things but maybe embedded systems or dsp is more what I'm looking for?
- badosu 10y ago
  These days I made a project as a test for a job. It required a SPA framework, I am pretty much used to Backbone but wanted to use this opportunity to check how are the new shiny things these days. So I picked up Vue.js The architecture is pretty clean, minimalistic and well thought. Soon I realized how terrible documented most of the tools on js land are these days, it was very frustrating to see that most of the options are not well documented, so that you must find a suitable blog post or tutorial from someone that is used with all the quirks. This is not to say that the issue is with JS itself or it's ecosystem, it may be or not, but this little anecdote is what I can share from this experience. I hope this is just an exception.
gingerbread-man 10y ago
It doesn't really matter very much where you start. Pick something and dive in. Once you feel very comfortable with that, add another skill. Personally, I'd suggest learning a programming language first: Python, Javascript, and Ruby are all good choices. Find a book you really like in one of those languages and read it cover to cover. PS: https://eloquentjavascript.net https://eloquentjavascript.net is great, and free.
- afarrell 10y ago
  If you want to go with python, http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/ http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/ followed by http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000754 http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000754 are both free and teach good habits on the way to backend web development.
  - sdfin 10y ago
    I think this is the link for the site of the last edition of the 2nd book you mention http://www.obeythetestinggoat.com/ http://www.obeythetestinggoat.com/
    - gingerbread-man 10y ago
      What a wonderful name for a programming book.
      - afarrell 10y ago
        I actually bought a plushie goat and keep him on my desk.
dorian-graph 10y ago
You don't need to learn everything on there. Also, while some company may use/follow x (especially CSS methodologies), from what I've seen it's usually a poor attempt making it a lot easier to pick up.
marknadal 10y ago
I highly agree, and have strongly voiced "keeping things simple" with: 1. HTML4 (no special/new tags) Edit: CSS, of course (unfortunately, CSS is a pain to learn though, so get a lot of experience/experimenting) 2. Pure ES5 JavaScript (don't waste time with build-steps/compiling JS, that defeats the point/purpose - or if you want to, learn a language like ClojureScript or Elm/Haskell) 3. jQuery to manipulate the DOM (skip frameworks and stick to libraries, this will force you to actually understand JS rather than being a copy-paster. Once you have this down, build your own personalized framework to abstract things away, only then should you try experimenting with Angular/React, etc. others) 4. Notepad++ or Sublime (avoid using any terminal tools, including NodeJS, until you are comfortable with having a browser and an editor open side by side, and refreshing when making changes. Keep it simple: just files!) 5. NodeJS or PHP, GitHub for Desktop (learn basic command line use, but if something takes you more than 20 minutes to figure out, seek out a community/forum/help that is friendly and encouraging to newbs. Don't waste time on channels that make fun of you for not knowing command line.) 6. Heroku (for deploying, and having your page live to show your mom what you built) I wrote a beginner's tutorial for the first 3 items, it takes between 5 minutes to 30 minutes for people who have only played with a little bit of HTML. It teaches you how to build a ToDo app: http://gun.js.org/think.html http://gun.js.org/think.html , let me know if there is anything I can do to improve it.
- et-al 10y ago
  CSS needs to be included. CSS is the polish that changes a proof of concept into a presentable product. There's a number of Show HN projects that I'm hesitant to invest much time in because they look like the author won't bother maintaining them months down the line. Even your nicely made tutorial has CSS. ;) btw feedback: * For some reason it wasn't evident to me that the left black box was editable and I actually interacted with the right-side wondering why nothing was happening. Perhaps use something that doesn't have an interaction so I don't try to click the button at first glance. * Found myself scrolling up and an down a lot to read the next few instructions and updating the code. If things were side by side, this would be easier. * It'd be nice to step backwards for the instructions * The pre-formatted code in the instructions is a bit small. Might be hard to read for some people
cblock811 10y ago
Echoing others here, definitely just pick somewhere and get started. Spending time worrying about making the "right" decision is the worst thing you can do. I made that mistake when I was teaching myself and it cost me a few weeks until I finally just picked a language and went with it.
cm2187 10y ago
The most important skill is to brag about using a javascript framework that no one else has heard about in order to make everyone anxious that they are has-been already.

rgovind 10y ago

And you can never be sure what questions will be asked from you during an interview, especially, since the only thing job description says is "Rockstar frontend Engineer"

wheelerwj 10y ago
*rockstar frontend engineer with 10+ years of experience.
ricardobeat 10y ago
How many of those have you done? It's usually basic JavaScript / CSS / HTML / responsive design, performance, accessibility. You don't hire a plumber by asking him about the make of his hammer.
- dagw 10y ago
  You don't hire a plumber by asking him about the make of his hammer. You might if all the nails you have could only be used with a certain make of hammer and if learning how to use a different hammer efficiently could take several month.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ricardobeat 10y ago
    Let's not get carried away, but that's the result of your own choice to accept vendor lock-in. Like having to hire only authorised service providers. Most companies I've known are smart enough to avoid that and just hire good generalist developers, and the interviews will be shaped accordingly.
- Beltiras 10y ago
  I've been using this exact analogy the other way around about hiring in IT. First screening is usually some HR drone scanning your resume/cv for buzzwords. HR: So, I see on your resume you have been building houses for a decade. This is a good foundation for the work we are doing. Applicant carpenter: Yes, all sorts of houses. Done both interiors and prep for concrete pouring. Fiddled a little bit with wiring on a job where the electrician needed some help. HR: Uhu. Yes. What vendor did you use for your tools? AC: Pardon? HR: Well, we have secured a really good deal on tools from Stanley. Are you familiar with their hammers? AC: (puzzled) uhn, sure. I'm not too sure what I used on my last site. For me a hammer is a hammer. It has to be a really crappy tool not to do it's work. HR: Thank you for coming in. I think you should expect a call from us sometime next week. (marks the checkbox, Not familiar with tools) Coding is usually based around learning the solution we are employing. It's a very boring problem if the solution is known beforehand. It's now knowing the tools that make you effective, it's being able to learn them that is valuable about a knowledge worker.

joatmon-snoo 10y ago

As a young'un myself (u/g senior), I think the more disturbing thing is that I see stuff that's missing (from front-end alone: ES5, ES7, Babel, Selenium, service workers, deferred dependencies, accessibility, Backbone, UI/UX, polyfills, and generally YAGNI/KISS to remind people that there are few things on the web that actually need to be SPAs). Fortunately I have no desire to do front-end work.

fizixer 10y ago

> I remember a decade ago when a front-end developer meant you handled HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Apache/PHP/MySQL. Wait a minute. If front-end developers handled Apache/PHP/MySQL too then what did back-end developers handle? I used to think front-end means client-side (HTML/CSS/Javascript) and back-end means server-side (Apache-or-nginx/PHP-or-Python-or-Ruby/MySQL-or-PostgresQL).

mattmanser 10y ago
Check out HN search for "front end development" from 7 years ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=front%20end%20development&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=story&dateStart=1107216000&dateEnd=1269820800 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=front%20end%20development&sort... Three pages of low vote threads with the occasional mention of front-end development. There wasn't much of a term of front-end development 7 years ago. It's a new thing. You had back-end devs who would do some funky front-end stuff with often atrocious UIs and a bunch of designers who would hack together some jQuery plugins badly. The highest voted story from 7 years ago is talking about converting PSD to HTML/CSS, which many of us back then would have sneered at being called development.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  Yeah, I feel like the notion of a dedicated front end engineer as oppossed to an engineer working with a contract designer is relatively new. A few years ago, I was working contract at MS, and they had this concept of DevOps which seemed so weird to me. It was like a marriage between IT and engineering. Only in the last few years has DevOps come to stand on its own as a dedicated discipline. which actually gives me some perspective for the speed at which FE tools seem be iterating. I'll have to keep that in mind moving forward.
Washuu 10y ago
Seven years ago when I was starting my current job that is what I was doing; which was all of it. From taking design's PSDs to turn them into markup, to programming the back end, and occasionally traveling to the data center to setup servers and networking. The "Full Stack developer plus SysOps" of trades. My job was not labeled as front end, back end, DevOps, or SysOps. We did not really use those terms that are much more common place today. Just an engineer who was wholly responsible for various web properties from end user experience to server up time.

zwieback 10y ago

Is that a sign that the good kind of consolidation hasn't happened yet or are all of these competing systems justified?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

megablast 10y ago

Front end doing MySQL? And PHP? Isn't that full stack?