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You're wrong. App/mobile and web developers are stretched beyond belief as it comes to skills expected of them. This handbook gives a reasonable overview of th

You're wrong. App/mobile and web developers are stretched beyond belief as it comes to skills expected of them. This handbook gives a reasonable overview of the scope of a front-end developer: https://thoughtworksinc.github.io/front-end-handbook/en/ https://thoughtworksinc.github.io/front-end-handbook/en/ Yet it's still incomplete, most of the cloud stuff isn't even included. We're over-asking people. Take Spotify. Has an army of quite decent engineers. They had to actually build a homegrown platform to shield developers from the ops tooling madness. The average developer struggles to understand just git. Even senior ones do. Front-end developers were a joke 20 years ago. Not taken very serious, not "real" developers. Now it's one of the most complicated programming jobs there are. You have to know...everything. As for performance, there I do agree that a programmer has a responsibility.

kaishiro 3y ago
I’d urge you to not so flatly dismiss someone’s opinion as wrong. The situation is obviously (I would think) more nuanced than that. I’d also argue that if a senior developer does not have control over their VCS, they should rethink their title. These are tools in a toolbox - you don’t need to be an expert in all of them, but seniority requires, at a minimum, proficiency.
- toastercat 3y ago
  Not to dismiss your opinion, but for someone arguing in favor of nuance, your perspective on seniority is surprisingly... un-nuanced. So a senior is not a senior if they are not proficient at Git? How do you even measure that proficiency? EDIT: FWIW, I don't value titles like "senior" and never took them to be meaningful.
  - kaishiro 3y ago
    > So a senior is not a senior if they are not proficient at Git? In my opinion (for whatever that's worth!), no (although I would say VCS in general, not git specifically). I personally consider being able to properly version control your code to be a critical skill when it comes to development - regardless of your place on the stack. YMMV. > FWIW, I don't value titles like "senior" and never took them to be meaningful. I don't necessarily disagree with regard to the current state of the industry, however as a proponent of development having more professional standards I still believe that we should be attempting to find some common ground on the standards of proficiency and mentorship.
dinkleberg 3y ago
While I agree that there is a lot to frontend development, that list is ridiculous. It is useful as far as knowing what categories of things you may come across at some point. But as far as things you need to know? This is significantly overstating it.
- yCombLinks 3y ago
  The point being that all of those topics are a potential area to deep dive. The previous poster is disappointed that not everyone happens to deep dive on his specific area of interest, while there are likely a hundred areas other people are experts in that he has not done a deep dive for.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  Given time you will come across almost all of them. And you're expected to rapidly pick up any gaps you may have in that list. For the simple reason that on most teams, there's no other person.
- phist_mcgee 3y ago
  It's a pretty fair list of things I have come across in my career. As lead, it's my job to know at least generally about all these things, and for many to have deep experience and intuition into others. The breadth of my frontend career has only kept expanding over the last 10 years, it's definitely harder than when I started.
throwaway2037 3y ago
This whole post was great except for the first sentence. I'm getting old and I feel overwhelmed by the creep of "stuff" that I need to know. For me, it used to be UNIX + C + bash shell was enough to survive. My only defence is to write a small Wiki page for each category of "stuff". After a year on the job, I have built an organic encyclopedia that I can quickly search to remind me about "stuff" that I use infrequently. And, to be fair, holy shit is modern web programming complicated. I am consistently amazed by the results on a wide variety of platforms. EDIT Wow, the link that you shared is amazing. Very well written. Thank you to share.
white_dragon88 3y ago
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- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
  This is a hot take statement in both directions. Git is complicated. You’ll also probably only use 10% of it unless you’re writing Git tooling as part of your work. One does not simply understand “just Git”. One also is not a poor excuse for a developer for not bothering to understand the 90% of Git that is never even used in a day to day workflow, and it’s not really true that an average developer struggles to understand the 10% of Git that they need to know to do their jobs.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  Very few people "understand" git outside of the core development team. People do know how to use git in their day to day life. Clone, pull, push, maybe a cheeky rebase if they're up for it. But bisecting and all that deep level stuff? No way an "average developer" will do that without prompted. I consider myself a senior developer and in many cases I just resort to re-cloning the repository and copying my changes over to it by hand instead of spending time fighting git tooling to get everything done Properly. My way is faster and I can go on with my day.
brycelarkin 3y ago
I don’t think having a breadth of knowledge in frontend, backend, and cloud infra is too much to ask. Think of how much is asked from other white collar professions such as law and medicine.

kaishiro 3y ago

I’d urge you to not so flatly dismiss someone’s opinion as wrong. The situation is obviously (I would think) more nuanced than that. I’d also argue that if a senior developer does not have control over their VCS, they should rethink their title. These are tools in a toolbox - you don’t need to be an expert in all of them, but seniority requires, at a minimum, proficiency.

toastercat 3y ago
Not to dismiss your opinion, but for someone arguing in favor of nuance, your perspective on seniority is surprisingly... un-nuanced. So a senior is not a senior if they are not proficient at Git? How do you even measure that proficiency? EDIT: FWIW, I don't value titles like "senior" and never took them to be meaningful.
- kaishiro 3y ago
  > So a senior is not a senior if they are not proficient at Git? In my opinion (for whatever that's worth!), no (although I would say VCS in general, not git specifically). I personally consider being able to properly version control your code to be a critical skill when it comes to development - regardless of your place on the stack. YMMV. > FWIW, I don't value titles like "senior" and never took them to be meaningful. I don't necessarily disagree with regard to the current state of the industry, however as a proponent of development having more professional standards I still believe that we should be attempting to find some common ground on the standards of proficiency and mentorship.

dinkleberg 3y ago

While I agree that there is a lot to frontend development, that list is ridiculous. It is useful as far as knowing what categories of things you may come across at some point. But as far as things you need to know? This is significantly overstating it.

yCombLinks 3y ago
The point being that all of those topics are a potential area to deep dive. The previous poster is disappointed that not everyone happens to deep dive on his specific area of interest, while there are likely a hundred areas other people are experts in that he has not done a deep dive for.
iteratethis 3y ago
Given time you will come across almost all of them. And you're expected to rapidly pick up any gaps you may have in that list. For the simple reason that on most teams, there's no other person.
phist_mcgee 3y ago
It's a pretty fair list of things I have come across in my career. As lead, it's my job to know at least generally about all these things, and for many to have deep experience and intuition into others. The breadth of my frontend career has only kept expanding over the last 10 years, it's definitely harder than when I started.

throwaway2037 3y ago

This whole post was great except for the first sentence. I'm getting old and I feel overwhelmed by the creep of "stuff" that I need to know. For me, it used to be UNIX + C + bash shell was enough to survive. My only defence is to write a small Wiki page for each category of "stuff". After a year on the job, I have built an organic encyclopedia that I can quickly search to remind me about "stuff" that I use infrequently. And, to be fair, holy shit is modern web programming complicated. I am consistently amazed by the results on a wide variety of platforms. EDIT Wow, the link that you shared is amazing. Very well written. Thank you to share.

white_dragon88 3y ago

[dead]

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
This is a hot take statement in both directions. Git is complicated. You’ll also probably only use 10% of it unless you’re writing Git tooling as part of your work. One does not simply understand “just Git”. One also is not a poor excuse for a developer for not bothering to understand the 90% of Git that is never even used in a day to day workflow, and it’s not really true that an average developer struggles to understand the 10% of Git that they need to know to do their jobs.
theshrike79 3y ago
Very few people "understand" git outside of the core development team. People do know how to use git in their day to day life. Clone, pull, push, maybe a cheeky rebase if they're up for it. But bisecting and all that deep level stuff? No way an "average developer" will do that without prompted. I consider myself a senior developer and in many cases I just resort to re-cloning the repository and copying my changes over to it by hand instead of spending time fighting git tooling to get everything done Properly. My way is faster and I can go on with my day.

brycelarkin 3y ago

I don’t think having a breadth of knowledge in frontend, backend, and cloud infra is too much to ask. Think of how much is asked from other white collar professions such as law and medicine.