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This sounds like all but two of my software jobs. The greatest challenge of being an individual contributor is being beholden to the constraints of the environ

This sounds like all but two of my software jobs. The greatest challenge of being an individual contributor is being beholden to the constraints of the environment. If they tell you to dig a hole then that’s what you do. If they tell you to waste all day digging into some unnecessary framework to make a single CSS change that should take 30 seconds plus a few minutes for deployment then that's what you do. In front end development people NEED the world's largest application frameworks (sometimes plural) because they cannot figure out state management. State management is stupid simple and a solved problem, but whatever. It will still, at the job, take you all day (maybe a week) to make that 30 second change.

throwaway23597 4y ago
This is why I hate frontend so much. Frontend sits right at the uncomfortable intersection between overly complicated tech that's tough to understand, and demanding PMs and UXs who need the feature to look or behave a certain way. I initially enjoyed frontend because of the hands-on nature of it, being able to make something and then play around with it in my browser. But after the 100th time wrestling around with CSS and JS to make some minuscule style change, I just am done with it.
- throwaway0asd 4y ago
  I super enjoy pushing innovative new front end technologies in personal projects where a 30 second fix might take as much as 5 minutes after test automation and all necessary due diligence, but at past jobs I just dig that hole they tell me to dig. If you try to bring up that the days work could be solved in less than hour if only we didn’t make all the wrong decisions and fear the platform they will look at you like you’re retarded. I have heard this mentality expressed perfectly in the movie Edge of Tomorrow: Don’t tell anybody. Are we clear? Best case scenario you’re gonna end up in a psych ward. Worse case you’ll get dissected for study
  - Andys 4y ago
    Best argument around for doing your own startup.
galoisscobi 4y ago
Do you have any recommendations for resources/tools on state management? My background is in robotics engineering and I’m working on picking up front end so I can build end to end web apps for myself. Currently learning react with a lot of head scratching.
- throwaway0asd 4y ago
  I wrote a thorough examination of state management with a code example. That essay is small enough to fit on two printed pages. I cannot share things I have written without breaking the anonymity of this account. Here is the summary: * You need a storage location * You need a defined data structure to store your state data. I recommend storing everything in a single logical storage object, because 1 is simple and simple is good. * You will need to update and save your storage object at the needs of your application. I do it on each user interaction, because this is cheap. * On page load you will need to access your storage object and apply it to the user facing event handlers that create your state artifacts that otherwise normally execute in response to user interactions. That’s it. Consider the problem from the goal and work backwards to the solution.
  - galoisscobi 4y ago
    That’s helpful. Thank you for taking the time to summarize your essay and sharing it here.
- jrockway 4y ago
  If you're building web apps for yourself, do you even need to do state management? Just print the results wrapped in HTML from your backend.
  - galoisscobi 4y ago
    I’m hoping to grow side projects that I enjoy working on but not in the short term, hence current focus is to only build things for myself. It’s also fun and educational for me to develop my own toolbox to get a sense for what works at different scales, how to iterate quickly on features of arbitrary complexity in the same spirit as PG’s beating the averages essay.

throwaway23597 4y ago

This is why I hate frontend so much. Frontend sits right at the uncomfortable intersection between overly complicated tech that's tough to understand, and demanding PMs and UXs who need the feature to look or behave a certain way. I initially enjoyed frontend because of the hands-on nature of it, being able to make something and then play around with it in my browser. But after the 100th time wrestling around with CSS and JS to make some minuscule style change, I just am done with it.

throwaway0asd 4y ago
I super enjoy pushing innovative new front end technologies in personal projects where a 30 second fix might take as much as 5 minutes after test automation and all necessary due diligence, but at past jobs I just dig that hole they tell me to dig. If you try to bring up that the days work could be solved in less than hour if only we didn’t make all the wrong decisions and fear the platform they will look at you like you’re retarded. I have heard this mentality expressed perfectly in the movie Edge of Tomorrow: Don’t tell anybody. Are we clear? Best case scenario you’re gonna end up in a psych ward. Worse case you’ll get dissected for study
- Andys 4y ago
  Best argument around for doing your own startup.

galoisscobi 4y ago

Do you have any recommendations for resources/tools on state management? My background is in robotics engineering and I’m working on picking up front end so I can build end to end web apps for myself. Currently learning react with a lot of head scratching.

throwaway0asd 4y ago
I wrote a thorough examination of state management with a code example. That essay is small enough to fit on two printed pages. I cannot share things I have written without breaking the anonymity of this account. Here is the summary: * You need a storage location * You need a defined data structure to store your state data. I recommend storing everything in a single logical storage object, because 1 is simple and simple is good. * You will need to update and save your storage object at the needs of your application. I do it on each user interaction, because this is cheap. * On page load you will need to access your storage object and apply it to the user facing event handlers that create your state artifacts that otherwise normally execute in response to user interactions. That’s it. Consider the problem from the goal and work backwards to the solution.
- galoisscobi 4y ago
  That’s helpful. Thank you for taking the time to summarize your essay and sharing it here.
jrockway 4y ago
If you're building web apps for yourself, do you even need to do state management? Just print the results wrapped in HTML from your backend.
- galoisscobi 4y ago
  I’m hoping to grow side projects that I enjoy working on but not in the short term, hence current focus is to only build things for myself. It’s also fun and educational for me to develop my own toolbox to get a sense for what works at different scales, how to iterate quickly on features of arbitrary complexity in the same spirit as PG’s beating the averages essay.