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The problem also is web developers themselves, with the author of this piece and the Redditor they quote included. Whatever Medium's needs are for putting imag

The problem also is web developers themselves, with the author of this piece and the Redditor they quote included. Whatever Medium's needs are for putting images and the written word on the screen were satisfied a decade+ ago. The fact that that Medium article doesn't work is a consequence of how web developers have normalized the practice of passing the blame for their failures and lack of competence on to the browsers and browser makers by extension. We shouldn't even use the term "web developer". The entire industry, bolstered by analogizing themselves to mobile app programmers, have snowed the world and warped expectations that they are or should be anything other than experts in digital content publishing. The entire notion of "full stack" (which embodies a lie in the very term) should have never even happened. If we really want to pick bones, where the engineers working on web browsers and "web developers" are both fair targets, then the overwhelmingly pressing matter would have to be how the latter are a piss poor substitute for anyone competent the skills they should possess, which would involve library and information sciences and a smattering of practical tech discipline. The industry is a perfect example of the rampant "consultant effect", where people create massively complicated stacks that often don't accomplish anything that their forebears couldn't manage, and then get paid bloated salaries for mastering the tools and workflows that are ostensibly meant to solve the very problems that they are responsible for foisting onto the world in the first place.

naravara 5y ago
> The industry is a perfect example of the rampant "consultant effect", where people create massively complicated stacks that often don't accomplish anything that their forebears couldn't manage, and then get paid bloated salaries for mastering the tools and workflows that are ostensibly meant to solve the very problems that they are responsible for foisting onto the world in the first place. Organizations want to buy a solution to their problem instead of reorganizing themselves to develop the fundamentals required to not have the problem. It's like managing your back-pain with pain killers without actually doing any physical therapy or lifestyle changes to fix your body mechanics. It's a temporary solution that puts you on a ladder to needing ever more intensive interventions.
ryandrake 5y ago
> Whatever Medium's needs are for putting images and the written word on the screen were satisfied a decade+ ago. The fact that that Medium article doesn't work is a consequence of how web developers have normalized the practice of passing the blame for their failures and lack of competence on to the browsers and browser makers by extension. The problem of displaying images and text on the web was solved in the first [EDIT: an early] HTML spec in the mid 90s. Yet web sites still manage to screw it up and make it unnecessarily dependent on JavaScript. I always thought the web would be a lot more pleasant if web "developers" would just stop programming for a bit and learn a little HTML.

naravara 5y ago

> The industry is a perfect example of the rampant "consultant effect", where people create massively complicated stacks that often don't accomplish anything that their forebears couldn't manage, and then get paid bloated salaries for mastering the tools and workflows that are ostensibly meant to solve the very problems that they are responsible for foisting onto the world in the first place. Organizations want to buy a solution to their problem instead of reorganizing themselves to develop the fundamentals required to not have the problem. It's like managing your back-pain with pain killers without actually doing any physical therapy or lifestyle changes to fix your body mechanics. It's a temporary solution that puts you on a ladder to needing ever more intensive interventions.

ryandrake 5y ago

> Whatever Medium's needs are for putting images and the written word on the screen were satisfied a decade+ ago. The fact that that Medium article doesn't work is a consequence of how web developers have normalized the practice of passing the blame for their failures and lack of competence on to the browsers and browser makers by extension. The problem of displaying images and text on the web was solved in the first [EDIT: an early] HTML spec in the mid 90s. Yet web sites still manage to screw it up and make it unnecessarily dependent on JavaScript. I always thought the web would be a lot more pleasant if web "developers" would just stop programming for a bit and learn a little HTML.