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I've interviewed a lot of web devs over the years. The distribution on this question is surprisingly bimodal. One group of web devs is great at picking the rig

I've interviewed a lot of web devs over the years. The distribution on this question is surprisingly bimodal. One group of web devs is great at picking the right tool for the job. Simple web applications get simple solutions. The complex SPA solutions only get brought out for applications that require it. The other group of web devs has learned one very specific tool and they want to build their career around that tool. The business requirements don't matter. They're going to use their favorite tool regardless of whether or not it's appropriate. The more complex they can make something, the better they think it will look on their resume. The latter group can be valuable assets if you know that your application requires a SPA and matches the person's chosen specialty. However, if you're hiring a dev who wants to build complex apps and your company doesn't require complex apps, you're going to end up with unnecessarily complex apps. Then the person will use the complex app to boost their resume and leave for another company. Fortunately, it's not too hard to differentiate between the two groups at interview time.

wefarrell 5y ago
"One group of web devs is great at picking the right tool for the job. Simple web applications get simple solutions. The complex SPA solutions only get brought out for applications that require it." You could replace SPAs with almost any technology (Queues, Kubernetes, an RDMS as opposed to BaaS, Servers as opposed to lambdas) and it would be correct depending on your own background and personal bias.
- fernandotakai 5y ago
  at least for me, that's the difference between someone on a senior level and someone that is not on that level yet. sometimes you just need to be pragmatic and say "this should be on an ec2 server with a simple html page -- no need for a react frontend that talks to a graphql endpoint that sends message to rabbitmq so another microservice can consume it". also, being able to accept that a simple solution is good without putting too many barriers in front of that.
  - wefarrell 5y ago
    Just using an EC2 server typically involves a load balancer, a web server (nginx/Apache) and another web server like unicorn to manage the threads, and then a database at the bare minimum. That’s not objectively than using an SPA and a BaaS. If you’re a front end engineer who’s used to working with node then an SPA + BaaS might be much simpler to you than running an EC2 instance that serves basic html. Edit: and that doesn’t even get into securely managing updates, access controls, infrastructure, etc. those things might seem fairly trivial today but in the future imagine getting dinged for them in an interview.
- midrus 5y ago
  Can confirm. I once had as a team me a weirdo that would refuse to run ANYTHING on his computer outside of docker. From git, to his browser, to the mail client, to the editor...everything had to be in a container. His Thinkpad had more containers that our entire production cluster. What a waste of energy and time.
Mezzie 5y ago
Have you noticed a difference depending on when they got into web development/whether they trained for it? One thing I'm noticing as I'm looking for tech jobs as a tech person who hasn't ever been a tech employee before is that a lot of the job listings are very heavily tool focused. I wonder if newer/junior devs are reacting to what the market is presenting (as you hinted at with 'The more complex they can make something, the better they think it will look on their resume').
- jack_riminton 5y ago
  Junior dev here (but a career changer at aged 35), I initially learned Ruby/Rails at bootcamp 80% of the market is looking for some React + backend and there's a huge pressure to learn such an SPA framework but I've steadfastly refused and have stuck to 'full-stack' Rails. Luckily there's a resurgence going on for Rails and I think it's going to last. Boring always wins in the end
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    I'm your polar inverse: I'm 33 but started coding when I was 4, I've just never worked as a developer (at least not on a team; I've done freelance), and I'm debating making the jump as inflation starts creeping up. I run into the opposite problem: I've played around in frameworks but I don't have the 'years of experience' with them so I worry my resume is going straight in the trash.
    - jack_riminton 5y ago
      4?! I wouldn't worry, all you need is the first job in whatever stack and last a year and you're set
      - Mezzie 5y ago
        Ha, I had a very nerdy upbringing. My grandfather was obsessed with TVs and ran a side repair business, and then in turn my dad got into micro-computers and PCs. On my mom's side, we've got a bunch of engineers and sci-fi nerds. I learned to type before I could write, and I learned to read by playing things like Dragon Warrior with my dad. I was also a hyperlexic little weirdo who did things like read the SimEarth manual for fun when I was 5 and decided to explain the differences between prokaryotes and eukaryotes to anybody who would listen. So when we got Web access in '93, I was all in. And I loved getting to do something where all that mattered was how good I was at it, since I was bored senseless in school. I very much had an upbringing like Larry Page's. I'm just a lot dumber than he is. Edit: I also doubt you could do that now, on reflection. So much of learning programming is based on feedback and I could only collaborate because nobody asked how old you were and/or if they did, they assumed I was lying. Up until I was about 11, it was assumed I was somebody who just didn't want to share any personal information online/a privacy freak who was making up a stupid answer. "Okay, haha, you're a 7 year old girl. Fine. I won't ask."
mejutoco 5y ago
Requirements like "x years of experience in Angular 1.34" are a hint of which kind you will get ;)
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
A friend inside my company was telling me that they can't have an app written for them in C# because it's NOT JAVA. That .NET stuff is too new and trendy! And probably insecure! I swear, my Fortune 150 company is going to continue to do waterfall development in Java by outsourced teams until our products are no longer relevant, and we're bought for spare parts.
redbar0n 5y ago
> One group of web devs is great at picking the right tool for the job. Simple web applications get simple solutions. The complex SPA solutions only get brought out for applications that require it. I like to see myself in this group. The problem is, however: requirements creep. Especially when consulting. The customer doesn’t know the full extent of their needs, and they always want more and more. Which in the end often invalidates the initial decision of «going simple and lean». Then you’ll have trouble explaining why incremental changes start to take so much time. So I think there is some merit to the approach of getting really good at a particular powerful and generalizable set of tools (even if they have flaws, such as not being lean, a bit complex, and shipping more JS to the client). I think that’s why React and NextJS’ is so enormously popular, even though they’re overkill for most sites and webapps.

wefarrell 5y ago

"One group of web devs is great at picking the right tool for the job. Simple web applications get simple solutions. The complex SPA solutions only get brought out for applications that require it." You could replace SPAs with almost any technology (Queues, Kubernetes, an RDMS as opposed to BaaS, Servers as opposed to lambdas) and it would be correct depending on your own background and personal bias.

fernandotakai 5y ago
at least for me, that's the difference between someone on a senior level and someone that is not on that level yet. sometimes you just need to be pragmatic and say "this should be on an ec2 server with a simple html page -- no need for a react frontend that talks to a graphql endpoint that sends message to rabbitmq so another microservice can consume it". also, being able to accept that a simple solution is good without putting too many barriers in front of that.
- wefarrell 5y ago
  Just using an EC2 server typically involves a load balancer, a web server (nginx/Apache) and another web server like unicorn to manage the threads, and then a database at the bare minimum. That’s not objectively than using an SPA and a BaaS. If you’re a front end engineer who’s used to working with node then an SPA + BaaS might be much simpler to you than running an EC2 instance that serves basic html. Edit: and that doesn’t even get into securely managing updates, access controls, infrastructure, etc. those things might seem fairly trivial today but in the future imagine getting dinged for them in an interview.
midrus 5y ago
Can confirm. I once had as a team me a weirdo that would refuse to run ANYTHING on his computer outside of docker. From git, to his browser, to the mail client, to the editor...everything had to be in a container. His Thinkpad had more containers that our entire production cluster. What a waste of energy and time.

Mezzie 5y ago

Have you noticed a difference depending on when they got into web development/whether they trained for it? One thing I'm noticing as I'm looking for tech jobs as a tech person who hasn't ever been a tech employee before is that a lot of the job listings are very heavily tool focused. I wonder if newer/junior devs are reacting to what the market is presenting (as you hinted at with 'The more complex they can make something, the better they think it will look on their resume').

jack_riminton 5y ago
Junior dev here (but a career changer at aged 35), I initially learned Ruby/Rails at bootcamp 80% of the market is looking for some React + backend and there's a huge pressure to learn such an SPA framework but I've steadfastly refused and have stuck to 'full-stack' Rails. Luckily there's a resurgence going on for Rails and I think it's going to last. Boring always wins in the end
- Mezzie 5y ago
  I'm your polar inverse: I'm 33 but started coding when I was 4, I've just never worked as a developer (at least not on a team; I've done freelance), and I'm debating making the jump as inflation starts creeping up. I run into the opposite problem: I've played around in frameworks but I don't have the 'years of experience' with them so I worry my resume is going straight in the trash.
  - jack_riminton 5y ago
    4?! I wouldn't worry, all you need is the first job in whatever stack and last a year and you're set
    - Mezzie 5y ago
      Ha, I had a very nerdy upbringing. My grandfather was obsessed with TVs and ran a side repair business, and then in turn my dad got into micro-computers and PCs. On my mom's side, we've got a bunch of engineers and sci-fi nerds. I learned to type before I could write, and I learned to read by playing things like Dragon Warrior with my dad. I was also a hyperlexic little weirdo who did things like read the SimEarth manual for fun when I was 5 and decided to explain the differences between prokaryotes and eukaryotes to anybody who would listen. So when we got Web access in '93, I was all in. And I loved getting to do something where all that mattered was how good I was at it, since I was bored senseless in school. I very much had an upbringing like Larry Page's. I'm just a lot dumber than he is. Edit: I also doubt you could do that now, on reflection. So much of learning programming is based on feedback and I could only collaborate because nobody asked how old you were and/or if they did, they assumed I was lying. Up until I was about 11, it was assumed I was somebody who just didn't want to share any personal information online/a privacy freak who was making up a stupid answer. "Okay, haha, you're a 7 year old girl. Fine. I won't ask."

mejutoco 5y ago

Requirements like "x years of experience in Angular 1.34" are a hint of which kind you will get ;)

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago

A friend inside my company was telling me that they can't have an app written for them in C# because it's NOT JAVA. That .NET stuff is too new and trendy! And probably insecure! I swear, my Fortune 150 company is going to continue to do waterfall development in Java by outsourced teams until our products are no longer relevant, and we're bought for spare parts.

redbar0n 5y ago

> One group of web devs is great at picking the right tool for the job. Simple web applications get simple solutions. The complex SPA solutions only get brought out for applications that require it. I like to see myself in this group. The problem is, however: requirements creep. Especially when consulting. The customer doesn’t know the full extent of their needs, and they always want more and more. Which in the end often invalidates the initial decision of «going simple and lean». Then you’ll have trouble explaining why incremental changes start to take so much time. So I think there is some merit to the approach of getting really good at a particular powerful and generalizable set of tools (even if they have flaws, such as not being lean, a bit complex, and shipping more JS to the client). I think that’s why React and NextJS’ is so enormously popular, even though they’re overkill for most sites and webapps.