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I think there are a few different factors at play: 1. Javascript has a massive and diverse community. Developers that would otherwise avoid the language must l
by thomasmeeks 8y ago
I think there are a few different factors at play:
1. Javascript has a massive and diverse community. Developers that would otherwise avoid the language must learn to use it. So, where other languages would rally around one framework (because of the self-selection), Javascript rallies into sub-communities around methodologies and architectures.
2. Javascript is gaining new developers at a very high rate. All these new minds bring new ideas, new combinations of ideas, and lots of re-invented ideas too. All of it, even revisiting old ideas, pushes the collective industry in new directions.
3. Frontend developers have had to layer on top of a set of tools barely adequate for what we're trying to accomplish. For example, jQuery should never have been necessary, but was revolutionary when it came out. Today there's still not great solutions around storage, security, performance, etc. Solving these problems improve the abstraction and allow higher-level frameworks to appear.
4. Based on what I've seen there appear to be very few UI toolkits that aren't kind of garbage. Human interaction and rendering pretty bits is hard. Generally I think the industry (even outside webdev) is still looking for the "right answer" to the problem.
- d0m 8y agoIMHO it's just that front-end is very complex and we haven't found the perfect solution yet.. so a lot of great people are trying many things
- MuffinFlavored 8y agoIs it in your mind/words harder than backend development?
- bobthepanda 8y agoI feel that frontend has a lot more quirks than backend development has simply because of how hard it is to get UX right. Browsers are a lot better these days about standards but there is still inconsistency, especially if you want to target certain segments of the population like IE or Safari. Accessibility has general guidelines but YMMV with different screenreaders. And developers are not in the position to ask users to switch to a preferred compatible system just for their special snowflake shopping site or gig economy startup or CRUD app.
- thomasmeeks 8y agoIn the general sense I don't think frontend or backend web development is more difficult than the other. It has more to do with the problem being solved and the expertise of the individuals involved. For example, your comment made me wonder what I would point out as example of maximum complexity in either field -- distributed systems, tight performance constraints, exceptionally magical functionality, and so on. Everything I thought of is something that's done in both backend and frontend systems. I do feel that the industry perception is that backend development is more technical. But I don't believe that is true anymore personally, and I think that perception is rapidly changing. For what it's worth, I'm much more of a backend developer myself.
- twtw 8y agoI would add 5. All those new developers entering the web development community want to make a name for themselves, and there isn't as much opportunity for that if you are just using a framework created by someone else.
- 8draco8 8y agoAnd many of those developers think that they are smarter than everybody else and instead of contributing to existing projects they are either doing another fork or reinventing something from scratch. I am strong believer in: 'Do not reinvent the wheel, improve it!' I think backend developers are more mature community, front end is still quite fresh, it reminds me of PHP in years of versions 1-3 where there was virtually no standards, everybody was inventing whatever they wanted and working on top of that. This days PHP is much more mature and the same will happen to JS and whole front end, we just need time.