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> …it fills me with dread. > Because maybe I’ll still be fine and alive and kicking by then—but all those bright-eyed eager newcomers getting churned out of co

> …it fills me with dread. > Because maybe I’ll still be fine and alive and kicking by then—but all those bright-eyed eager newcomers getting churned out of code schools knowing only React? > Those jobs will be gone. I find this faux concern tacked on at the end unconvincing. Everyone who's been in tech a while has learned some things that proved to have a short half-life. It doesn't mean they are doomed, they just learn the next thing and keep on going as progress marches on. For example, the poor ROI of my investment in learning jQuery in 2013 has not stopped me from having a very enjoyable career these last 10 years. I'm no React zealot and will tell you I intentionally avoid trying to build frontend expertise because these things tend to fall away so quickly. But despite my healthy skepticism, I genuinely don't understand the angry and bullying tone coming across in these type of articles lately. If you don't want to use React, don't use it. It's very simple. I don't see why it's so offensive to you that others are making different choices. When you say "I don’t think most React developers have evaluated shit!" and call their decisions/preferences "ludicrous", the only thing that comes across is that you apply "I don't agree, therefore others are stupid" as your primary lens. Which, fine, if that's how you want to conduct yourself. But it's not the sort of approach I look for in my leadership.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago
> I genuinely don't understand the angry and bullying tone coming across in these type of articles lately. Uh, it's literally in the second paragraph: 'I’m mad because I’ve been hearing this line of thinking for years from many different sources, and—just like Alex—I feel in the strongest possible terms that it’s “astonishingly, gobsmackingly effective bullshit.”' This is a theme that's threaded throughout the piece. For example: 'I kid you not, I was emphatically informed that my skills as a Ruby on Rails web developer were no longer relevant to “modern” developer practice.' The point is: The author feels like they are the ones that have been bullied, for years, by folks pushing the SPA hype cycle, and 'ridiculed ... for [their] choice of technology stack/language/etc'. And I can't really blame them.
- BackBlast 4y ago
  So what? You got preached to. "Bullied" seems to strong. Now it's time to shout your displeasure to the world of it's unfairness? Every round of tech hype sounds about the same. Object Oriented programming. The network is the computer. SCRUM. Mobile apps. SPA. Micro-services. Cloud. Serverless. They make it sound like the savior of all that ails you, but the reality is always more nuanced. It's like this in more than just tech. There are interesting ideas in all of them, places they could be used and places they shouldn't. The reality never matches the hype train. The more experienced I get the more I generally want tried, true, and longevity to be attributes of the stack I pick. This seldom intersects with hype. Unplug a bit from the online echo chambers preaching this stuff and you won't feel so "bullied".
  - throwaway372458 4y ago
    You may have a different experience than me. At my work place, if you mention experiences with "old" technology you are looked down upon and spoken to in a condescending attitude. I'm talking about common sense things like gzip compression and etags for huge downloads. This "magic" is relevant even though they haven't heard about it before as someone fresh out of college. That spreads to other areas as well and you are not included in technical discussions that are not frontend related. I guess the rationale is that someone who is not up to date in React, are probably not up to date in databases or architecture either. So you get junior developers not really listening to advice from seniors because they are not in the right group...
    - BackBlast 4y ago
      Sounds like toxic workplace problems to me. Those are very not fun.
deleted 4y ago
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throw_away1525 4y ago
I just started a career in web development and do 95% of my work in React and I love it. I'm able to ship features for customers to use insanely quickly. When it falls out of favor and I need to learn Svelte (or whatever) my plan is to just... do that? It took me a week to start being productive in React. It isn't like this isn't a problem outside of web development, either. Imagine getting hired to maintain some legacy engineering software with a GUI built in Delphi and a backend written in Fortran...
- jurassic 4y ago
  Exactly. Continuous learning is the job.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bdougherty 4y ago
> I don't see why it's so offensive to you that others are making different choices. Because those choices have had a major negative impact on everyone, especially and most importantly and significantly on the people who visit those websites.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago

> I genuinely don't understand the angry and bullying tone coming across in these type of articles lately. Uh, it's literally in the second paragraph: 'I’m mad because I’ve been hearing this line of thinking for years from many different sources, and—just like Alex—I feel in the strongest possible terms that it’s “astonishingly, gobsmackingly effective bullshit.”' This is a theme that's threaded throughout the piece. For example: 'I kid you not, I was emphatically informed that my skills as a Ruby on Rails web developer were no longer relevant to “modern” developer practice.' The point is: The author feels like they are the ones that have been bullied, for years, by folks pushing the SPA hype cycle, and 'ridiculed ... for [their] choice of technology stack/language/etc'. And I can't really blame them.

BackBlast 4y ago
So what? You got preached to. "Bullied" seems to strong. Now it's time to shout your displeasure to the world of it's unfairness? Every round of tech hype sounds about the same. Object Oriented programming. The network is the computer. SCRUM. Mobile apps. SPA. Micro-services. Cloud. Serverless. They make it sound like the savior of all that ails you, but the reality is always more nuanced. It's like this in more than just tech. There are interesting ideas in all of them, places they could be used and places they shouldn't. The reality never matches the hype train. The more experienced I get the more I generally want tried, true, and longevity to be attributes of the stack I pick. This seldom intersects with hype. Unplug a bit from the online echo chambers preaching this stuff and you won't feel so "bullied".
- throwaway372458 4y ago
  You may have a different experience than me. At my work place, if you mention experiences with "old" technology you are looked down upon and spoken to in a condescending attitude. I'm talking about common sense things like gzip compression and etags for huge downloads. This "magic" is relevant even though they haven't heard about it before as someone fresh out of college. That spreads to other areas as well and you are not included in technical discussions that are not frontend related. I guess the rationale is that someone who is not up to date in React, are probably not up to date in databases or architecture either. So you get junior developers not really listening to advice from seniors because they are not in the right group...
  - BackBlast 4y ago
    Sounds like toxic workplace problems to me. Those are very not fun.

deleted 4y ago

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throw_away1525 4y ago

I just started a career in web development and do 95% of my work in React and I love it. I'm able to ship features for customers to use insanely quickly. When it falls out of favor and I need to learn Svelte (or whatever) my plan is to just... do that? It took me a week to start being productive in React. It isn't like this isn't a problem outside of web development, either. Imagine getting hired to maintain some legacy engineering software with a GUI built in Delphi and a backend written in Fortran...

jurassic 4y ago
Exactly. Continuous learning is the job.
deleted 4y ago
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bdougherty 4y ago

> I don't see why it's so offensive to you that others are making different choices. Because those choices have had a major negative impact on everyone, especially and most importantly and significantly on the people who visit those websites.