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FWIW, I'm not trying to suggest that front-end and back-end dev are the same and that no-one will have any preference for one or the other. Of course they feel

FWIW, I'm not trying to suggest that front-end and back-end dev are the same and that no-one will have any preference for one or the other. Of course they feel different and some people will enjoy one thing or another more. My objection is to the common arguments that front-end and back-end dev are fundamentally different on a technical level and/or that they should be done by different people or that the same person can't be good at both. Compared to other programming fields, such as traditional desktop applications or embedded real time systems, front- and back-end on the web are quite similar in the skills and technologies they use, and I don't think drawing a clear line between them is very helpful (that is, I agree with the original article that started this discussion on this point).

mercer 6y ago
front-end: webpack/parcel/etc. configs, plugins, css-, js- and asset-'transpilation'. arcane CSS knowledge, keeping up with HTML developments, learning about promises, no async, no web-workers, react hooks, etc. back-end: perhaps less, uh, dynamic, but: db architecture, SQL, much more CLI/linuxy stuff, server security, API design, version control, deployment, containers, ansible, load-balancing, nginx config... The difference not primarily being a sort of 'core' skillset, but rather purely learning and remembering the intricacies of all these things. That's too much for most people. EDIT: I find that there's a definite sense of 'progress' or 'leveling-up' in all these areas put together. I get better at finding the right documentation, finding the best places to go for help, figuring out what the foot-guns are as well as distinguishing fads from truly worthwhile developments. I get better at 'intuiting' where I might need to take a deep dive to truly understand things, or where I might need to consult an expert. It gets easier to take lessons from one area and apply them to another. But ultimately there's still so much 'domain knowledge', much of it shifting and changing, even if just because the client cares about it, that it's hard to keep up in both the front- and back-end world. And even if that shouldn't have to be necessary, in practice it often is. For example, I've been doing more back-end stuff for the past few years. I keep an eye on what's happing in the js/React world as that is what I mostly did before. I struggle with setting up a new project because apparently Webpack changed, apparently we do CSS in js now, and apparently hooks are the hot new thing. I have a /lot/ of time to study all of this, but unless I actually work on a project that uses all this fancy new stuff, it doesn't really properly become part of my skillset. The same goes for backend stuff. I can set up proper Linux servers 'in anger', but apparently now it's pretty useful to know how to use Amazon/Moft serverless stuff and I just never got to that. And I'm single and almost permanently reading up on all this fancy new stuff!

mercer 6y ago

front-end: webpack/parcel/etc. configs, plugins, css-, js- and asset-'transpilation'. arcane CSS knowledge, keeping up with HTML developments, learning about promises, no async, no web-workers, react hooks, etc. back-end: perhaps less, uh, dynamic, but: db architecture, SQL, much more CLI/linuxy stuff, server security, API design, version control, deployment, containers, ansible, load-balancing, nginx config... The difference not primarily being a sort of 'core' skillset, but rather purely learning and remembering the intricacies of all these things. That's too much for most people. EDIT: I find that there's a definite sense of 'progress' or 'leveling-up' in all these areas put together. I get better at finding the right documentation, finding the best places to go for help, figuring out what the foot-guns are as well as distinguishing fads from truly worthwhile developments. I get better at 'intuiting' where I might need to take a deep dive to truly understand things, or where I might need to consult an expert. It gets easier to take lessons from one area and apply them to another. But ultimately there's still so much 'domain knowledge', much of it shifting and changing, even if just because the client cares about it, that it's hard to keep up in both the front- and back-end world. And even if that shouldn't have to be necessary, in practice it often is. For example, I've been doing more back-end stuff for the past few years. I keep an eye on what's happing in the js/React world as that is what I mostly did before. I struggle with setting up a new project because apparently Webpack changed, apparently we do CSS in js now, and apparently hooks are the hot new thing. I have a /lot/ of time to study all of this, but unless I actually work on a project that uses all this fancy new stuff, it doesn't really properly become part of my skillset. The same goes for backend stuff. I can set up proper Linux servers 'in anger', but apparently now it's pretty useful to know how to use Amazon/Moft serverless stuff and I just never got to that. And I'm single and almost permanently reading up on all this fancy new stuff!