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I don't think this does that well at all. 70% of the stuff on there is textbook "hip and trendy". If you want to know what to learn, learn web fundamentals. Le

I don't think this does that well at all. 70% of the stuff on there is textbook "hip and trendy". If you want to know what to learn, learn web fundamentals. Learn the Web APIs and everything that's been standardized in HTML, CSS and JS. Learn relational databases. Etc. Learn how to build your graphics using SVG. Learn how to do your animations with CSS. Hell, if that's too boring learn WebGL and WebAssembly. They may not be ready, tested or in vogue, but they'll be here for the long haul. Screw libraries that abstract over this stuff. If you don't learn from the ground up you're putting your future career in the hands of things that may end up being ephemeral. Stuff like React, Sass, D3 etc might seem like safe bets, but so did jQuery at one stage. Just, be aware that your goals as a developer are sometimes at odds with the goals of your employer or even the community as a whole. There's a lot of pressure to get up to speed and be productive as quick as possible. You can see this in things like the React docs, which encourage you to ignore language features and just memorise patterns.

jen729w 8y ago
This is real nice as a philosophy, and I fundamentally agree. But I want to get stuff made. I have ideas, I have a thing I want to make. Would I like to really deeply properly fundamentally understand JavaScript? Sure! Do I have time, with my actual real job and friends and life and other hobbies? Nope. Thank goodness, then, for React. It's a godsend. (Also, I have no desire to "work" as a developer for someone else as my salaried job. Perhaps that affects my outlook.)
- BigJono 8y ago
  Keep in mind I'm not recommending that you don't use React. I'm using it for a hobby project right now. I just mean that you should understand all the concepts behind it so that if you need to move to another tool for a particular job or if it's superceded by something in the future, you can make the jump across much easier. My usual measuring stick is "if this thing disappeared tomorrow, would I be able to recreate it from scratch myself with no documentation?" (obviously not up to the same performance standards).
dwd 8y ago
jQuery is still worth knowing and is a handy library for managing cross-browser compatibility outside of a SPA framework. Same as using something like normalize.css to baseline your CSS. It's still a long way off disappearing and in many high security environments might be the only approved library. https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/jQuery https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/jQuery

jen729w 8y ago

This is real nice as a philosophy, and I fundamentally agree. But I want to get stuff made. I have ideas, I have a thing I want to make. Would I like to really deeply properly fundamentally understand JavaScript? Sure! Do I have time, with my actual real job and friends and life and other hobbies? Nope. Thank goodness, then, for React. It's a godsend. (Also, I have no desire to "work" as a developer for someone else as my salaried job. Perhaps that affects my outlook.)

BigJono 8y ago
Keep in mind I'm not recommending that you don't use React. I'm using it for a hobby project right now. I just mean that you should understand all the concepts behind it so that if you need to move to another tool for a particular job or if it's superceded by something in the future, you can make the jump across much easier. My usual measuring stick is "if this thing disappeared tomorrow, would I be able to recreate it from scratch myself with no documentation?" (obviously not up to the same performance standards).

dwd 8y ago

jQuery is still worth knowing and is a handy library for managing cross-browser compatibility outside of a SPA framework. Same as using something like normalize.css to baseline your CSS. It's still a long way off disappearing and in many high security environments might be the only approved library. https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/jQuery https://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/jQuery