3 ms·

Lets be honest: if you can copy and paste from w3 schools you can probably be a front end web developer.

by readme 6y ago

lhnz 6y ago
Are you talking about building a 90s-style website or something like Figma?
- readme 6y ago
  I wish people would only build 90's style sites. The way things are going is bad, here are some example sites that I find particularly difficult to use: - new reddit (old reddit is much, much better) - parley (yes, the "free speech" twitter) has a terrible UI. it takes like a year to post a tweet and you wait like 30 seconds for some dynamic spinning progress dialog to go away The web was not invented as an application development platform. I think we have gone too far with web applications. Good web apps are simple and have low complexity. Once you start trying to make it really "modern" and fancy you're shooting yourself in the foot because of all the browser quirks. The more you use heavyweight frameworks, the more complex and crufty your work becomes. With that said I do see the appeal because there aren't many good desktop UI frameworks either. I've worked with Qt enough to know it's plenty frustrating. On the other hand, if it's so easy to make a portable web app, why do we have things like Electron that ship a browser with your web-app, aside from native experience? Wait, did I dare say: native experience, is valuable? We are well past peak web app, we are even past peak mobile app. What even makes an app, an app? Is it that it's tailored to a smaller purpose than more general applications? Would you call Microsoft Visual Studio an app? Probably not. Is it good software, yes. Is Vim an app? I don't think I'd call it that. How about 'cat'? Nah... Apps are tailored to a specific business purpose rather than a more general use case. Apps are a fad, but good software tools are not a fad. Build good tools, don't build apps (unless you're paying the bills)
  - lhnz 6y ago
    > Would you call Microsoft Visual Studio an app? Probably not. Yes. Visual Studio Code is a good example of a high-quality web app built by front-end developers. 'App' is a shortening of 'Application' popularised by iOS. The state of the art in UI Engineering, is everything that used to be done in C++, but on the web/cross-platform using a mixture of JavaScript and WebAssembly. Anyway, my point is that you are shitting on front-end development, yet there are front-end engineers out there developing high-quality software, and it is difficult: it requires a lot more ability than just copy-pasting from W3 Schools.
scarface74 6y ago
I don’t agree. But, there is no way that I would go through the trouble of keeping up with modern front end development and the $cool_kids framework of the day. A front end developer is the easiest thing to contract out and have them code to spec. There is a lot of demand, but since it’s the easiest to train for, salaries have stagnated for years as their more supply. You get the worse of both worlds. It’s harder to keep up with the changing landscape and you get paid less for your trouble.

Lets be honest: if you can copy and paste from w3 schools you can probably be a front end web developer.

by readme 6y ago

Lets be honest: if you can copy and paste from w3 schools you can probably be a front end web developer.

lhnz 6y ago

Are you talking about building a 90s-style website or something like Figma?

readme 6y ago
I wish people would only build 90's style sites. The way things are going is bad, here are some example sites that I find particularly difficult to use: - new reddit (old reddit is much, much better) - parley (yes, the "free speech" twitter) has a terrible UI. it takes like a year to post a tweet and you wait like 30 seconds for some dynamic spinning progress dialog to go away The web was not invented as an application development platform. I think we have gone too far with web applications. Good web apps are simple and have low complexity. Once you start trying to make it really "modern" and fancy you're shooting yourself in the foot because of all the browser quirks. The more you use heavyweight frameworks, the more complex and crufty your work becomes. With that said I do see the appeal because there aren't many good desktop UI frameworks either. I've worked with Qt enough to know it's plenty frustrating. On the other hand, if it's so easy to make a portable web app, why do we have things like Electron that ship a browser with your web-app, aside from native experience? Wait, did I dare say: native experience, is valuable? We are well past peak web app, we are even past peak mobile app. What even makes an app, an app? Is it that it's tailored to a smaller purpose than more general applications? Would you call Microsoft Visual Studio an app? Probably not. Is it good software, yes. Is Vim an app? I don't think I'd call it that. How about 'cat'? Nah... Apps are tailored to a specific business purpose rather than a more general use case. Apps are a fad, but good software tools are not a fad. Build good tools, don't build apps (unless you're paying the bills)
- lhnz 6y ago
  > Would you call Microsoft Visual Studio an app? Probably not. Yes. Visual Studio Code is a good example of a high-quality web app built by front-end developers. 'App' is a shortening of 'Application' popularised by iOS. The state of the art in UI Engineering, is everything that used to be done in C++, but on the web/cross-platform using a mixture of JavaScript and WebAssembly. Anyway, my point is that you are shitting on front-end development, yet there are front-end engineers out there developing high-quality software, and it is difficult: it requires a lot more ability than just copy-pasting from W3 Schools.

scarface74 6y ago

I don’t agree. But, there is no way that I would go through the trouble of keeping up with modern front end development and the $cool_kids framework of the day. A front end developer is the easiest thing to contract out and have them code to spec. There is a lot of demand, but since it’s the easiest to train for, salaries have stagnated for years as their more supply. You get the worse of both worlds. It’s harder to keep up with the changing landscape and you get paid less for your trouble.