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While the JavaScript ecosystem is on the volatile side, learning new tools and frameworks every few years is just part of our job. Only in very boring tech jobs

While the JavaScript ecosystem is on the volatile side, learning new tools and frameworks every few years is just part of our job. Only in very boring tech jobs would you only have to learn new things maybe once every 5 years. I wouldn't really bother wasting time "mastering" something like Webpack or what replaces it - as the other commenter said we just end up using an abstraction over it anyway.

discreteevent 7y ago
The problem with changing tools to fend off boredom is that it has a very short lifespan. Pretty quickly your brain realizes that it's not learning anything fundamentally new and it protests. Hence fatigue. If possible, it's better to focus on the problem domain and try to make the best of that for entertainment. If not then maybe just accept that it's better to be a bit bored than fatigued.
jbverschoor 7y ago
It’s not learning a new frameworks and tools. It’s the fact that these tools are usually fragile, and quite frankly not very much new is in there. Also, what’s your goal? To learn new tools over and over again? Or to crate something that that people will use? You sound like a music “producer” (read - tech hobbiest) who keeps switching tools, synths, and hardware instead of just creating music.
- dpau 7y ago
  Yes, I don't even think the most important issue is that we as developers have js fatigue. The biggest issue is that we are developing web applications that are outdated before they are even released. Our software relies on thousands of dependencies that are constantly changing or even dying off. Updating an application that was built two or even just one year ago is often not a trivial task. So while the frameworks and tooling have thankfully improved, in general the cost of developing and maintaining an application seems to be much greater than in the past (e.g. PHP MVC app with some jQuery sprinkled in).
  - freehunter 7y ago
    It's blogs and sites like Udemy. Their business model depends on people needing to learn new technologies constantly. So when they tell you "MVC is dead" or "Rails is dead", there is a direct profit motive in it for them. They tell you everyone is using Backbone.js, so you move. Then the next year it's Angular. Backbone is outdated, no one uses it anymore. Then the next year it's React. The blogs drive the technology shifts in order to get clicks. And every time the technology shifts, Udemy sells a million tutorial videos at $10 a piece. Everyone gets up to speed on the new thing just in time for the blogs to find new clicks and Udemy to find new videos. Meanwhile the real world still runs on Laravel, Rails, Flask, and Postgres.
eternalny1 7y ago
The reality of the situation is that JavaScript was designed at a time when there was NO CLUE that it would become the de-facto client-side language for decades. So now the ECMAScript standard is pushing JavaScript towards a "proper" language, but we need additional tools (TS, Babel, etc) to write in an even more "proper" language/syntax that will give us something that the browser still needs to understand (JavaScript). This isn't a fun process for those of us who have been developing a long time. Look, JavaScript has classes! And modules! Ok, that's good I guess, we're getting there. But that's not learning, that's just getting closer to something we are already familiar with as software engineers.

discreteevent 7y ago

The problem with changing tools to fend off boredom is that it has a very short lifespan. Pretty quickly your brain realizes that it's not learning anything fundamentally new and it protests. Hence fatigue. If possible, it's better to focus on the problem domain and try to make the best of that for entertainment. If not then maybe just accept that it's better to be a bit bored than fatigued.

jbverschoor 7y ago

It’s not learning a new frameworks and tools. It’s the fact that these tools are usually fragile, and quite frankly not very much new is in there. Also, what’s your goal? To learn new tools over and over again? Or to crate something that that people will use? You sound like a music “producer” (read - tech hobbiest) who keeps switching tools, synths, and hardware instead of just creating music.

dpau 7y ago
Yes, I don't even think the most important issue is that we as developers have js fatigue. The biggest issue is that we are developing web applications that are outdated before they are even released. Our software relies on thousands of dependencies that are constantly changing or even dying off. Updating an application that was built two or even just one year ago is often not a trivial task. So while the frameworks and tooling have thankfully improved, in general the cost of developing and maintaining an application seems to be much greater than in the past (e.g. PHP MVC app with some jQuery sprinkled in).
- freehunter 7y ago
  It's blogs and sites like Udemy. Their business model depends on people needing to learn new technologies constantly. So when they tell you "MVC is dead" or "Rails is dead", there is a direct profit motive in it for them. They tell you everyone is using Backbone.js, so you move. Then the next year it's Angular. Backbone is outdated, no one uses it anymore. Then the next year it's React. The blogs drive the technology shifts in order to get clicks. And every time the technology shifts, Udemy sells a million tutorial videos at $10 a piece. Everyone gets up to speed on the new thing just in time for the blogs to find new clicks and Udemy to find new videos. Meanwhile the real world still runs on Laravel, Rails, Flask, and Postgres.

eternalny1 7y ago

The reality of the situation is that JavaScript was designed at a time when there was NO CLUE that it would become the de-facto client-side language for decades. So now the ECMAScript standard is pushing JavaScript towards a "proper" language, but we need additional tools (TS, Babel, etc) to write in an even more "proper" language/syntax that will give us something that the browser still needs to understand (JavaScript). This isn't a fun process for those of us who have been developing a long time. Look, JavaScript has classes! And modules! Ok, that's good I guess, we're getting there. But that's not learning, that's just getting closer to something we are already familiar with as software engineers.