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Haven't worked much with Laravel, but I know it's been around for many years now. I have MVC experience so it should not be so hard to get the basics. Laravel w

Haven't worked much with Laravel, but I know it's been around for many years now. I have MVC experience so it should not be so hard to get the basics. Laravel was something I had a very small brush with in a 2018 job. Was really burned by the client so it ended quickly. Also, please excuse me from going on a tangent here. I have some kind of paranoia about picking a library or framework for a job, only for it to fall in demand soon after. Like how can I tell if some framework like Laravel is in the twilight years or not? My MVC of choice in 2012 was CodeIgniter. Nobody really uses that anymore. Not a good thing for my career. I just have an irrational fear of just picking the "late" thing again. Like the same fear some people get that every stock they buy in the stock market causes the price to go down. On the JS side of things, I picked up VueJS and React for some side projects. I'm probably more up to date on VueJS though. (another dev informed me that my React project's code is 6 years out of date and nobody really codes React like that anymore)

melony 4y ago
You are a software engineer. Learning and picking up new things should be your bread and butter. No major tech company test for "framework" knowledge over fundamentals. If you know how http and network requests work, how state and architecture are handled on server and client side, then all frameworks are the same. Frameworks are just abstractions on top of the basics.
- hamburglar 4y ago
  > If you know how http and network requests work, how state and architecture are handled on server and client side, then all frameworks are the same. Also, if you know all this, you have an advantage over a lot of green coders that came up focusing on the frameworks and higher level technologies. This shows up as next-level debugging and troubleshooting skills when compared to the noobs. I know new kids who can run circles around me when it comes to advanced react topics but can’t do the basic troubleshooting that tells you what layer of the system a request failure came from. Something tells me this old freelancer could.
ecshafer 4y ago
I don't think you should be too worried about specific technologies or frameworks. If you are strong in Web Development, Javascript, CSS, HTML, etc. then picking up React or Angular or Vue or whatever shouldn't be a lot of trouble. You have over 10 years of experience, so leverage that. Most of my work experience has been in Java, Javascript, and Python. I took a Ruby job, and there was a small ramp up period but its not insurmountable. Experience shipping production code should be teaching you many skills and thought processes that mean the actual specific tool shouldn't matter much.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  This. I'm similar to OP (but I've got ~30 years of 'smaller' work/experience under my belt). I've never had problems picking up on a new language or framework; if you understand the underlying fundamentals, it's easier to pick things up.
3np 4y ago
Switching this mindset might be one of your biggest potential game-changers and frankly something you should have done years ago. Over my life, I've gone deep down countless of such "dead ends". The same goes for most distinguished people I've worked with. Except they're not necessarily dead ends - syntax and APIs aside, so many concepts, practices and thinking can translate across. Ideally focus on first principles. Being comfortable with picking up some new obscure thing, getting up to speed quick, and then moving on to the next one after x days/weeks/months/years, is one of several distinguishing aspects of a veteran. That doesn't mean you should scurry around drilling down on random things for the sake of it, rather that a curious and fearless approach will naturally bring you there over time. Maybe set aside x hours per week for some small personal project where you apply new technologies to get familiar with them and the process. For example Laravel, or whatever else seems relevant or fun to you. Move on to adding on some new frontend library like React or Vue or whatnot. If nothing else it should make you feel more comfortable during interviews.
sanitycheck 4y ago
Don't worry about it - pretty much everything we learn has a finite lifespan. The job is partly about constantly learning, for better or worse. (At least my brain won't atrophy as I age, or so I tell myself.) Also the more you know the easier it is to pick up new things, everything is a bit like something else. An incomplete list of tech I know that became pretty much useless: VB6, perl (controversial?), classic ASP, director/shockwave, actionscript 1/2/3, flex, silverlight, GWT, ember, XSLT.. And there must be more! The good thing is, learning most of this stuff is free and easier than ever before. The big problem is picking something; if it takes 2-3 months to learn you want that to lead to at least 6 months of decently paid work. Client side web stuff moves ridiculously quickly, but if I were you I'd probably learn React and something like Next JS or Gatsby. You'll be up against bootcamp people in the job market and your broader experience should stand out against them. Pick a common hosted CI service (github actions, circleci, whatever) and learn it in a couple of weekends, the free quotas are plenty for small projects. Learn enough about TDD in your chosen new tech that you can talk about it convincingly and demonstrate proficiency. Often you'll get grilled on it in the interview then find absolutely no sign of it happening once you get the job! If you want something a bit slower moving, Android and iOS could be good - there's more to learn though, and often you'll end up having to deal with both and/or some hybrid native+HTML/JS monstrosity so that can go from lovely to evil quickly. I really like svelte at the moment, I was lucky to get a project it was a good fit for but it may not be a good "find a job soon" choice. I also have a couple of brightscript (Roku) projects on the go, that's horrible but my client couldn't find anyone else to do the work so I learned it a few years ago. It'll join my list of obsolete tech in the next few years but it's been worth it financially. [Edit: Also, typescript]

melony 4y ago

You are a software engineer. Learning and picking up new things should be your bread and butter. No major tech company test for "framework" knowledge over fundamentals. If you know how http and network requests work, how state and architecture are handled on server and client side, then all frameworks are the same. Frameworks are just abstractions on top of the basics.

hamburglar 4y ago
> If you know how http and network requests work, how state and architecture are handled on server and client side, then all frameworks are the same. Also, if you know all this, you have an advantage over a lot of green coders that came up focusing on the frameworks and higher level technologies. This shows up as next-level debugging and troubleshooting skills when compared to the noobs. I know new kids who can run circles around me when it comes to advanced react topics but can’t do the basic troubleshooting that tells you what layer of the system a request failure came from. Something tells me this old freelancer could.

ecshafer 4y ago

I don't think you should be too worried about specific technologies or frameworks. If you are strong in Web Development, Javascript, CSS, HTML, etc. then picking up React or Angular or Vue or whatever shouldn't be a lot of trouble. You have over 10 years of experience, so leverage that. Most of my work experience has been in Java, Javascript, and Python. I took a Ruby job, and there was a small ramp up period but its not insurmountable. Experience shipping production code should be teaching you many skills and thought processes that mean the actual specific tool shouldn't matter much.

Mezzie 4y ago
This. I'm similar to OP (but I've got ~30 years of 'smaller' work/experience under my belt). I've never had problems picking up on a new language or framework; if you understand the underlying fundamentals, it's easier to pick things up.

3np 4y ago

Switching this mindset might be one of your biggest potential game-changers and frankly something you should have done years ago. Over my life, I've gone deep down countless of such "dead ends". The same goes for most distinguished people I've worked with. Except they're not necessarily dead ends - syntax and APIs aside, so many concepts, practices and thinking can translate across. Ideally focus on first principles. Being comfortable with picking up some new obscure thing, getting up to speed quick, and then moving on to the next one after x days/weeks/months/years, is one of several distinguishing aspects of a veteran. That doesn't mean you should scurry around drilling down on random things for the sake of it, rather that a curious and fearless approach will naturally bring you there over time. Maybe set aside x hours per week for some small personal project where you apply new technologies to get familiar with them and the process. For example Laravel, or whatever else seems relevant or fun to you. Move on to adding on some new frontend library like React or Vue or whatnot. If nothing else it should make you feel more comfortable during interviews.

sanitycheck 4y ago

Don't worry about it - pretty much everything we learn has a finite lifespan. The job is partly about constantly learning, for better or worse. (At least my brain won't atrophy as I age, or so I tell myself.) Also the more you know the easier it is to pick up new things, everything is a bit like something else. An incomplete list of tech I know that became pretty much useless: VB6, perl (controversial?), classic ASP, director/shockwave, actionscript 1/2/3, flex, silverlight, GWT, ember, XSLT.. And there must be more! The good thing is, learning most of this stuff is free and easier than ever before. The big problem is picking something; if it takes 2-3 months to learn you want that to lead to at least 6 months of decently paid work. Client side web stuff moves ridiculously quickly, but if I were you I'd probably learn React and something like Next JS or Gatsby. You'll be up against bootcamp people in the job market and your broader experience should stand out against them. Pick a common hosted CI service (github actions, circleci, whatever) and learn it in a couple of weekends, the free quotas are plenty for small projects. Learn enough about TDD in your chosen new tech that you can talk about it convincingly and demonstrate proficiency. Often you'll get grilled on it in the interview then find absolutely no sign of it happening once you get the job! If you want something a bit slower moving, Android and iOS could be good - there's more to learn though, and often you'll end up having to deal with both and/or some hybrid native+HTML/JS monstrosity so that can go from lovely to evil quickly. I really like svelte at the moment, I was lucky to get a project it was a good fit for but it may not be a good "find a job soon" choice. I also have a couple of brightscript (Roku) projects on the go, that's horrible but my client couldn't find anyone else to do the work so I learned it a few years ago. It'll join my list of obsolete tech in the next few years but it's been worth it financially. [Edit: Also, typescript]