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With all due respect, this is some elitist nonsense. Sure, a frontend dev who strictly works on that won’t know much about, say, the OS layer. But they don’t h

by kaba0 3y ago

With all due respect, this is some elitist nonsense. Sure, a frontend dev who strictly works on that won’t know much about, say, the OS layer. But they don’t have to, it’s not part of their job in any way. There is no shortage of young people that work on areas that makes them require deep knowledge of many different layers of the stack, it is simply not necessary for every IT-related job. But one can absolutely pick it up if they want to.

leptons 3y ago
I once worked with a back-end dev who didn't know what RAM was. He knew C# and ASP.NET but couldn't point to RAM on a motherboard or explain what it really did. About all he could describe it as was "temporary storage". Their lack of basic knowledge of how computers work really showed in the crap code they wrote. It was no wonder it was their code that ate up all the RAM on the server because they never put much thought into the hardware it was running on. I know this is anecdotal, but there are plenty of devs just like this out there.
- slmkbh 3y ago
  I talked to a guy who "managed software development", and when I asked him about the resources om their developer machines (some kind of VM), he got angry at me when I laughed nervously when he didn't know what RAM was. No wonder a lot of modern software is terrible.
- paganel 3y ago
  > but couldn't point to RAM on a motherboard or explain what it really did. To be fair, the last time I "opened up" a computer and changed its RAM was about 10-12 years ago, and since that time I've only worked on a Mac Mini and on a laptop meant that "opening up" computers became a thing of the past.
  - leptons 3y ago
    This was years ago, in a Windows shop, everyone had a desktop PC. Not important that the guy didn't know what was inside his desktop, but it's the lack of understanding of the server hardware his code was to run on that was the problem. In all servers and desktop PCs ~10 years ago, RAM comes as DIMMs and would be easy to locate for anyone with a passing interest in computers. I'm not talking about Apple know-nothing fanbois here.
bakugo 3y ago
> Sure, a frontend dev who strictly works on that won’t know much about, say, the OS layer. But they don’t have to, it’s not part of their job in any way. The HTTP protocol, HTML and vanilla JS are not "the OS layer", and yes, it's part of your job as a web developer to at least understand the basics of them. There are many so-called "frontend devs" nowadays who literally only know React, and if you asked them to create a basic webpage where clicking a button changes some text in an element without React, they'd be completely lost. Usually the problem with this kind of developer is not just that they don't know, it's that they don't care. They WILL inevitably run into problems that require this basic knowledge to solve because the frameworks can only hold your hand so far, and instead of trying to figure out what's going on under the hood that's causing their issue, they will instead shrug and go "it's not part of my job" and just write a bunch of garbage spaghetti code in an attempt to work around the issue.
- pawelmurias 3y ago
  Shit developers used to cobble something together in PHP and had a bunch of horrid code on the web to copy and paste. Looking up some deeper part of the stack is not that hard for a legit dev.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  I think the critique is that you're applying this too narrowly to front end developers. Pretty much anyone who has been around long enough has met someone with years and years of experience doing exactly one thing, whether that's WordPress or java CRUD or something else where they have blindingly obvious gaps in their knowledge that someone with their experience shouldn't. The lack of deep knowledge isn't limited to a single field.
- kaba0 3y ago
  There are people who suck at their jobs in every industry. My wider point is that the skills required for a good web developer is vastly different than, say, a compiler dev. The latter is not a “webdev who is a better developer”, they need much more business-knowledge, understanding what the client meant, predicting future requirements, etc. This is an entirely new business domain, it’s not really trying to be the same.
codegeek 3y ago
It is not elitist to point out the flaws in modern web devs who don't know what an HTTP protocol is and the structure of an HTTP request (headers vs body etc). I interview a lot of them who cannot explain the difference between a form submitted directly vs through Ajax but they surely know how to send a POST request through node/express.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  I don’t even know the difference between a form submitted through JS vs a browser. Who cares? Unless there’s a problem, there’s no reason to know such things. And I’ve written http webservers by hand. People here have way too much confidence in their interview questions being a good signal for experience. It’s pretty wild.
  - codegeek 3y ago
    "Who cares? " You are proving my point. You should care.
    - sillysaurusx 3y ago
      Why? I’d rather care about ML. My point is that your question is some esoteric gotcha party question that may as well be out of Trivial Pursuit. But you’re treating it like anyone who doesn’t care is just being a bad engineer. There are countless ways engineers spend their time, and choosing what to work on is the most important choice of their careers. It’s on you to justify the claim that knowing the difference between a JS form submit vs browser submit matters at all, let alone that it’s a distinction that comes up in day to day life.
      - nucleardog 3y ago
        The issue isn’t that every single person in the IT field needs to know HTTP in detail. The issue is that people who have invested in training for a role and are applying for a role do not understand fundamental technologies that are essential to that role. For you that would be trying to work in ML not understanding any of the theory or how it works, but having used OpenCV with some premade models a few times. For a frontend web developer who, as a large part of their role, will need to communicate with backend systems… that’s not understanding how their FE web application actually communicates with BE systems. And from experience… yes, this is very common. And it has a noticeable impact on their effectiveness. Trying to debug why some interaction between your application and the BE application isn’t working while thinking the dev tools network inspector is just black magic and nonsense makes your job substantially more difficult. This does make these people bad engineers. They are not able to understand and solve a huge class of the problems that they face day-to-day and instead (in my experience) often fall back on “just try a bunch of different things until something works for reasons I don’t understand” which is a poor way to approach work and leads to overly complex, buggy, brittle systems.
moffkalast 3y ago
Besides, it's not like getting a CS degree doesn't mean getting acquainted with all layers of the stack. They still teach assembly, C, CPU architecture, low level networking, etc. It's just that most people rather specialize in something far less tedious. And there's definitely more areas to pick from today than had ever been before.

by kaba0 3y ago

leptons 3y ago

I once worked with a back-end dev who didn't know what RAM was. He knew C# and ASP.NET but couldn't point to RAM on a motherboard or explain what it really did. About all he could describe it as was "temporary storage". Their lack of basic knowledge of how computers work really showed in the crap code they wrote. It was no wonder it was their code that ate up all the RAM on the server because they never put much thought into the hardware it was running on. I know this is anecdotal, but there are plenty of devs just like this out there.

slmkbh 3y ago
I talked to a guy who "managed software development", and when I asked him about the resources om their developer machines (some kind of VM), he got angry at me when I laughed nervously when he didn't know what RAM was. No wonder a lot of modern software is terrible.
paganel 3y ago
> but couldn't point to RAM on a motherboard or explain what it really did. To be fair, the last time I "opened up" a computer and changed its RAM was about 10-12 years ago, and since that time I've only worked on a Mac Mini and on a laptop meant that "opening up" computers became a thing of the past.
- leptons 3y ago
  This was years ago, in a Windows shop, everyone had a desktop PC. Not important that the guy didn't know what was inside his desktop, but it's the lack of understanding of the server hardware his code was to run on that was the problem. In all servers and desktop PCs ~10 years ago, RAM comes as DIMMs and would be easy to locate for anyone with a passing interest in computers. I'm not talking about Apple know-nothing fanbois here.

bakugo 3y ago

> Sure, a frontend dev who strictly works on that won’t know much about, say, the OS layer. But they don’t have to, it’s not part of their job in any way. The HTTP protocol, HTML and vanilla JS are not "the OS layer", and yes, it's part of your job as a web developer to at least understand the basics of them. There are many so-called "frontend devs" nowadays who literally only know React, and if you asked them to create a basic webpage where clicking a button changes some text in an element without React, they'd be completely lost. Usually the problem with this kind of developer is not just that they don't know, it's that they don't care. They WILL inevitably run into problems that require this basic knowledge to solve because the frameworks can only hold your hand so far, and instead of trying to figure out what's going on under the hood that's causing their issue, they will instead shrug and go "it's not part of my job" and just write a bunch of garbage spaghetti code in an attempt to work around the issue.

pawelmurias 3y ago
Shit developers used to cobble something together in PHP and had a bunch of horrid code on the web to copy and paste. Looking up some deeper part of the stack is not that hard for a legit dev.
zdragnar 3y ago
I think the critique is that you're applying this too narrowly to front end developers. Pretty much anyone who has been around long enough has met someone with years and years of experience doing exactly one thing, whether that's WordPress or java CRUD or something else where they have blindingly obvious gaps in their knowledge that someone with their experience shouldn't. The lack of deep knowledge isn't limited to a single field.
kaba0 3y ago
There are people who suck at their jobs in every industry. My wider point is that the skills required for a good web developer is vastly different than, say, a compiler dev. The latter is not a “webdev who is a better developer”, they need much more business-knowledge, understanding what the client meant, predicting future requirements, etc. This is an entirely new business domain, it’s not really trying to be the same.

codegeek 3y ago

It is not elitist to point out the flaws in modern web devs who don't know what an HTTP protocol is and the structure of an HTTP request (headers vs body etc). I interview a lot of them who cannot explain the difference between a form submitted directly vs through Ajax but they surely know how to send a POST request through node/express.

sillysaurusx 3y ago
I don’t even know the difference between a form submitted through JS vs a browser. Who cares? Unless there’s a problem, there’s no reason to know such things. And I’ve written http webservers by hand. People here have way too much confidence in their interview questions being a good signal for experience. It’s pretty wild.
- codegeek 3y ago
  "Who cares? " You are proving my point. You should care.
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    Why? I’d rather care about ML. My point is that your question is some esoteric gotcha party question that may as well be out of Trivial Pursuit. But you’re treating it like anyone who doesn’t care is just being a bad engineer. There are countless ways engineers spend their time, and choosing what to work on is the most important choice of their careers. It’s on you to justify the claim that knowing the difference between a JS form submit vs browser submit matters at all, let alone that it’s a distinction that comes up in day to day life.
    - nucleardog 3y ago
      The issue isn’t that every single person in the IT field needs to know HTTP in detail. The issue is that people who have invested in training for a role and are applying for a role do not understand fundamental technologies that are essential to that role. For you that would be trying to work in ML not understanding any of the theory or how it works, but having used OpenCV with some premade models a few times. For a frontend web developer who, as a large part of their role, will need to communicate with backend systems… that’s not understanding how their FE web application actually communicates with BE systems. And from experience… yes, this is very common. And it has a noticeable impact on their effectiveness. Trying to debug why some interaction between your application and the BE application isn’t working while thinking the dev tools network inspector is just black magic and nonsense makes your job substantially more difficult. This does make these people bad engineers. They are not able to understand and solve a huge class of the problems that they face day-to-day and instead (in my experience) often fall back on “just try a bunch of different things until something works for reasons I don’t understand” which is a poor way to approach work and leads to overly complex, buggy, brittle systems.

moffkalast 3y ago

Besides, it's not like getting a CS degree doesn't mean getting acquainted with all layers of the stack. They still teach assembly, C, CPU architecture, low level networking, etc. It's just that most people rather specialize in something far less tedious. And there's definitely more areas to pick from today than had ever been before.