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> but I felt the months ticking by and my frontend skills degrading I don't doubt the author, but this specific statement seems off to me in a general sense.

by dgb23 5y ago

> but I felt the months ticking by and my frontend skills degrading I don't doubt the author, but this specific statement seems off to me in a general sense. Sure, you can get rusty with a specific set of tools, but picking them up at a later stage should not be too much of a hassle. _Should_ is the keyword here. Do others feel this way? Am I misinterpreting this?

pantulis 5y ago
I felt the same. "Months ticking" is like the OP is having some kind of career angst, or maybe I am out of the Silicon Valley rat race and world-class engineers think that way.
lstamour 5y ago
No, that line stood out to me too. I felt like that clearly expressed the lack of experience and maturity the author has with programming. Over the short term it is definitely possible to have a skill set degrade in a particular language or framework, but over the long term, this becomes normal and you tend to apply what you learn in one place to another place, despite using different technologies. And HTML in a browser is always frontend, regardless of tech…
dceddia 5y ago
As a React developer who can also sling Rails + ERB, they're very different skillsets, even though they're both broadly "frontend". I can see why someone who's trying to make a career as a React developer would see a primiarily-ERB role as a detour. And maybe in their next round of interviews, people would question how good they are at React if they spent the last X years doing mainly ERB/HTML with only sprinkles of React. "I see you don't have a lot of recent React experience..." And yeah, I agree - a person can get rusty with some tools and pick them up again just fine. The trouble isn't whether you (the interviewee) believes that, it's more about convincing the person on the other side of the table. The perception in JS-land is that things change Very Fast™ and that skills quickly go obsolete. (Disregarding that if you zoom out, React hasn't changed majorly in 4 years and it's been the dominant choice for 6+ – the perception of fast-paced change is definitely a thing)
crackinmalackin 5y ago
I think the author is justified in his thinking here. It's a large time investment to build skills to a certain level. To just set aside those hard earned skills, and not know when or if you'll be able to utilize them again is demoralizing. Especially if you enjoyed working with said technologies.
- dgb23 5y ago
  I can understand that, but that's kind of the opposite problem. You invested time and practice, now you want to benefit from it, versus you are currently not investing in the same skill, which degrades it over time. The latter seems overblown to me personally. Sure, to get warm again with some specific tech takes some effort, but it doesn't get lost.

by dgb23 5y ago

pantulis 5y ago

I felt the same. "Months ticking" is like the OP is having some kind of career angst, or maybe I am out of the Silicon Valley rat race and world-class engineers think that way.

lstamour 5y ago

No, that line stood out to me too. I felt like that clearly expressed the lack of experience and maturity the author has with programming. Over the short term it is definitely possible to have a skill set degrade in a particular language or framework, but over the long term, this becomes normal and you tend to apply what you learn in one place to another place, despite using different technologies. And HTML in a browser is always frontend, regardless of tech…

dceddia 5y ago

As a React developer who can also sling Rails + ERB, they're very different skillsets, even though they're both broadly "frontend". I can see why someone who's trying to make a career as a React developer would see a primiarily-ERB role as a detour. And maybe in their next round of interviews, people would question how good they are at React if they spent the last X years doing mainly ERB/HTML with only sprinkles of React. "I see you don't have a lot of recent React experience..." And yeah, I agree - a person can get rusty with some tools and pick them up again just fine. The trouble isn't whether you (the interviewee) believes that, it's more about convincing the person on the other side of the table. The perception in JS-land is that things change Very Fast™ and that skills quickly go obsolete. (Disregarding that if you zoom out, React hasn't changed majorly in 4 years and it's been the dominant choice for 6+ – the perception of fast-paced change is definitely a thing)

crackinmalackin 5y ago

I think the author is justified in his thinking here. It's a large time investment to build skills to a certain level. To just set aside those hard earned skills, and not know when or if you'll be able to utilize them again is demoralizing. Especially if you enjoyed working with said technologies.

dgb23 5y ago
I can understand that, but that's kind of the opposite problem. You invested time and practice, now you want to benefit from it, versus you are currently not investing in the same skill, which degrades it over time. The latter seems overblown to me personally. Sure, to get warm again with some specific tech takes some effort, but it doesn't get lost.