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I guess my question is if there's even such a thing as a "non self taught front end developer"? No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degre

by tempsy 7y ago

I guess my question is if there's even such a thing as a "non self taught front end developer"? No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. Most probably won't even teach JavaScript. Point is, becoming a good developer is largely a self-taught discipline as is.

snowron6 7y ago
>No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. Most probably won't even teach JavaScript. You're conflicting computer science with being a developer. A CS degree isn't about learning how to program in the industry.
- tempsy 7y ago
  No, I'm in agreement with that view. I'm responding to OP's line "If you're learning to code just for fun, these things are totally fine and can be incredibly fun, but if you're learning to code for a job, please don't treat these things as an "alternative" to college."
- Bubbadoo 7y ago
  A CS degree, especially at the undergraduate level, is mostly conceptual. It takes much experience to develop the intuition necessary to solve complex problems faced on the job.
tombert 7y ago
> No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. DISCLAIMER: I'm not a frontend developer. They will teach you why React is used though, at least indirectly. A good professor will explain the virtues and drawbacks of immutability, and explain how it affects performance; with this understanding, it will help you choose whether or not React or another framework is more appropriate. > Point is, becoming a good developer is largely a self-taught discipline as is. It can be, but to write code that ends up performing well, you typically have to have some underlying understanding of the "guts" of the libraries you're using. Dumb example, to find the smallest element of a list, I used to sort the list, and grab the first element out of it. This will work, but if I had taken any data structures or algorithms class, I would have learned that this is an O(n log n) process, whereas finding the min only requires O(n). This won't matter for smaller lists, but for something big it absolutely will. Now, maybe I'm just dumb, I'm willing to accept that, but it's not like when I realized this later and changed to the faster version, that the code for finding the min was appreciably shorter or prettier or easier to maintain, it was only faster.
- discordance 7y ago
  Dumb example but knowing why or when to Google something like how to find the smallest item in a list shouldn't necessitate a 4 year $50k+ degree
  - tombert 7y ago
    I knew just fine how to search for something and copypaste from Stackoverflow; I just didn't even realize that the solution that I immediately thought of was sub-optimal. Sure, that example maybe shouldn't necessitate a $50k degree, but my point was more that the theory inherently informs the practice. Taking a theoretic discrete math class does make your software better, even if it doesn't immediately seem relevant because all the job postings are asking for 10+ years of React experience or something.
brunonian- 7y ago
Brown's UI/UX course spends a small amount of time on React.
tester346 7y ago
>No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. Most probably won't even teach JavaScript. Point is, becoming a good developer is largely a self-taught discipline as is. I'll have React, GraphQL, .NET Core, EF Core, Dapper, MongoDB and RavenDB cuz we're having some courses with an actual industry person with 15+ years of exp (no, it isnt private school). Those courses are: Building applications based on HTTP / Non-relational Databases and Programming (lang + data access)

by tempsy 7y ago

snowron6 7y ago

>No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. Most probably won't even teach JavaScript. You're conflicting computer science with being a developer. A CS degree isn't about learning how to program in the industry.

tempsy 7y ago
No, I'm in agreement with that view. I'm responding to OP's line "If you're learning to code just for fun, these things are totally fine and can be incredibly fun, but if you're learning to code for a job, please don't treat these things as an "alternative" to college."
Bubbadoo 7y ago
A CS degree, especially at the undergraduate level, is mostly conceptual. It takes much experience to develop the intuition necessary to solve complex problems faced on the job.

tombert 7y ago

> No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. DISCLAIMER: I'm not a frontend developer. They will teach you why React is used though, at least indirectly. A good professor will explain the virtues and drawbacks of immutability, and explain how it affects performance; with this understanding, it will help you choose whether or not React or another framework is more appropriate. > Point is, becoming a good developer is largely a self-taught discipline as is. It can be, but to write code that ends up performing well, you typically have to have some underlying understanding of the "guts" of the libraries you're using. Dumb example, to find the smallest element of a list, I used to sort the list, and grab the first element out of it. This will work, but if I had taken any data structures or algorithms class, I would have learned that this is an O(n log n) process, whereas finding the min only requires O(n). This won't matter for smaller lists, but for something big it absolutely will. Now, maybe I'm just dumb, I'm willing to accept that, but it's not like when I realized this later and changed to the faster version, that the code for finding the min was appreciably shorter or prettier or easier to maintain, it was only faster.

discordance 7y ago
Dumb example but knowing why or when to Google something like how to find the smallest item in a list shouldn't necessitate a 4 year $50k+ degree
- tombert 7y ago
  I knew just fine how to search for something and copypaste from Stackoverflow; I just didn't even realize that the solution that I immediately thought of was sub-optimal. Sure, that example maybe shouldn't necessitate a $50k degree, but my point was more that the theory inherently informs the practice. Taking a theoretic discrete math class does make your software better, even if it doesn't immediately seem relevant because all the job postings are asking for 10+ years of React experience or something.

brunonian- 7y ago

Brown's UI/UX course spends a small amount of time on React.

tester346 7y ago

>No 4 year university will teach you React as part of a CS degree. Most probably won't even teach JavaScript. Point is, becoming a good developer is largely a self-taught discipline as is. I'll have React, GraphQL, .NET Core, EF Core, Dapper, MongoDB and RavenDB cuz we're having some courses with an actual industry person with 15+ years of exp (no, it isnt private school). Those courses are: Building applications based on HTTP / Non-relational Databases and Programming (lang + data access)