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You had me up until here: 'Web development matures and a "standard" stack is accepted, all in JS.' The Node ecosystem is a mess and it starts with core being a

You had me up until here: 'Web development matures and a "standard" stack is accepted, all in JS.' The Node ecosystem is a mess and it starts with core being a hodgepodge of deprecated mush. I think it's more likely that wasm picks up steam. Rails, PHP, Django, etc aren't going anywhere.

Nextgrid 7y ago
I almost feel like there are 2 parallel industries in web development. One based on solving problems and using the right tool for the job, and one based on bullshit, overengineering and including more and more complexity & tooling to make up for huge downsides in the language and to justify their entire careers (can you really advocate against using a tool when your entire career depends on using that tool?) The former will keep going and keep solving problems, but it'll be relatively quiet in the grand scheme of things just like it is now. The JS ecosystem will continue to thrive in the latter world where there's more VC money, hype & RAM than common sense, so we'll keep hearing about it. As long as there's enough VC money to fuel the fire this situation will keep going (along with NPM's storage expenses growing alarmingly) but the second the VC money dries up and hype-driven startups die off, companies will mostly come back to the first approach and the majority of "React developers" will be out of a job.
- papito 7y ago
  Right on. Most of my efforts now include fighting complexity, while everyone else around me seems hell-bent on adding more of it.
  - inimino 7y ago
    Hear, hear. We should start some kind of movement. Or at least write a manifesto.
    - asdf004 7y ago
      Lets do it this way: The product should be so sinple the customer understands how it works and must do all maintanace on it without help. If they do need help you've failed.
- leolas1995 7y ago
  This. Currently looking for job and it seems that every single company out there is just looking for someone who knows angular, react, node, etc. I always emphasize that I can learn the tools required by the job, but no, they just want someone with n years of experience in just a specific tool, instead of someone who can learn and adapt. Not a whine, just a concerned observation on the industry.
  - grumple 7y ago
    I found that some companies were willing to let you learn tech on the job. Talk to some recruiters. If you're confident, like me, make it clear to a recruiter or company that you have every confidence that you will learn the tech quickly and it won't be a problem.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  There's a lot of people in web development who are full of shit. You can tell who they are when they claim that JS or the DOM is slow unless you use X framework. What they either don't understand or ignore is that frameworks are for the developer, not the computer. If you are a fool, a framework isn't going to stop you from making really bad choices and over-engineering something into oblivion. Years from now, there will be people claiming that React is "too slow" or "too bloated" or "too complicated", and it will be abandoned for the next greatest thing. Some of this also has to do with the fact that there are lots of wild-eyed entrepreneurial types who either want to work for FAANG or have a startup that they believe will compete with FAANG. Thus, they only believe in the latest and greatest thing. The secret, or perhaps not-so-secret, is that the vast majority of web applications are still CRUD, and the average person doesn't understand the difference between a SPA and a server-rendered app. Most of the engineering effort that goes beyond that is probably a waste of time unless you really plan on doing things beyond CRUD. So the best thing is to actually understand the fundamentals, learn to do a good job at those, and use the tools that make sense for said job. That means that maybe, just maybe, your WebGL game doesn't need to use React.
TrueGeek 7y ago
It's no mistake that 7 and 8 and next to each other
crucialfelix 7y ago
But Rails and Django are for midsized websites only. Node is used in big companies for Microservices and serverless. Its impossible to scale Django to say 3000 developers.
- grumple 7y ago
  Github, Shopify, Airbnb, Hulu and more are built in Rails, so clearly it does scale. You can do microservices with Ruby/Python as well. Ditto serverless. And my own company does this. But comparing Rails (a framework for complete web dev functionality) to entirely different paradigms and use cases seems kind of silly. These frameworks don’t solve everything, but they make it far easier and cheaper to develop a website with under, say, 500 million users. Once you get that large you can start exploring paying more devs for better efficiency.
- orneryostrich 7y ago
  Uh... Instagram is a Django app...

Nextgrid 7y ago

I almost feel like there are 2 parallel industries in web development. One based on solving problems and using the right tool for the job, and one based on bullshit, overengineering and including more and more complexity & tooling to make up for huge downsides in the language and to justify their entire careers (can you really advocate against using a tool when your entire career depends on using that tool?) The former will keep going and keep solving problems, but it'll be relatively quiet in the grand scheme of things just like it is now. The JS ecosystem will continue to thrive in the latter world where there's more VC money, hype & RAM than common sense, so we'll keep hearing about it. As long as there's enough VC money to fuel the fire this situation will keep going (along with NPM's storage expenses growing alarmingly) but the second the VC money dries up and hype-driven startups die off, companies will mostly come back to the first approach and the majority of "React developers" will be out of a job.

papito 7y ago
Right on. Most of my efforts now include fighting complexity, while everyone else around me seems hell-bent on adding more of it.
- inimino 7y ago
  Hear, hear. We should start some kind of movement. Or at least write a manifesto.
  - asdf004 7y ago
    Lets do it this way: The product should be so sinple the customer understands how it works and must do all maintanace on it without help. If they do need help you've failed.
leolas1995 7y ago
This. Currently looking for job and it seems that every single company out there is just looking for someone who knows angular, react, node, etc. I always emphasize that I can learn the tools required by the job, but no, they just want someone with n years of experience in just a specific tool, instead of someone who can learn and adapt. Not a whine, just a concerned observation on the industry.
- grumple 7y ago
  I found that some companies were willing to let you learn tech on the job. Talk to some recruiters. If you're confident, like me, make it clear to a recruiter or company that you have every confidence that you will learn the tech quickly and it won't be a problem.
ravenstine 7y ago
There's a lot of people in web development who are full of shit. You can tell who they are when they claim that JS or the DOM is slow unless you use X framework. What they either don't understand or ignore is that frameworks are for the developer, not the computer. If you are a fool, a framework isn't going to stop you from making really bad choices and over-engineering something into oblivion. Years from now, there will be people claiming that React is "too slow" or "too bloated" or "too complicated", and it will be abandoned for the next greatest thing. Some of this also has to do with the fact that there are lots of wild-eyed entrepreneurial types who either want to work for FAANG or have a startup that they believe will compete with FAANG. Thus, they only believe in the latest and greatest thing. The secret, or perhaps not-so-secret, is that the vast majority of web applications are still CRUD, and the average person doesn't understand the difference between a SPA and a server-rendered app. Most of the engineering effort that goes beyond that is probably a waste of time unless you really plan on doing things beyond CRUD. So the best thing is to actually understand the fundamentals, learn to do a good job at those, and use the tools that make sense for said job. That means that maybe, just maybe, your WebGL game doesn't need to use React.

TrueGeek 7y ago

It's no mistake that 7 and 8 and next to each other

crucialfelix 7y ago

But Rails and Django are for midsized websites only. Node is used in big companies for Microservices and serverless. Its impossible to scale Django to say 3000 developers.

grumple 7y ago
Github, Shopify, Airbnb, Hulu and more are built in Rails, so clearly it does scale. You can do microservices with Ruby/Python as well. Ditto serverless. And my own company does this. But comparing Rails (a framework for complete web dev functionality) to entirely different paradigms and use cases seems kind of silly. These frameworks don’t solve everything, but they make it far easier and cheaper to develop a website with under, say, 500 million users. Once you get that large you can start exploring paying more devs for better efficiency.
orneryostrich 7y ago
Uh... Instagram is a Django app...