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The likening of the percieved "front-end devaluation" to gender and racial inequality completely derailed this article for me. The author, a white man funilly e

The likening of the percieved "front-end devaluation" to gender and racial inequality completely derailed this article for me. The author, a white man funilly enough, seems to be desperately trying to use these issues to give his own ideas legitimacy. Unfortunately most of his arguments are thinly veiled tantrums thrown in response to his misunderstanding of his own role in software development. Yes, under appreciation of front-end skills is a real problem. No, that doesn't mean HTML or CSS are programming languages. You aren't "programming the presentation logic", you're configuring the browser.

amiantos 3y ago
Author seems desperate to tie sexism into everything which is weird considering software engineering has been dominated for men so long I am not sure how he comes to the conclusion there is some sort of subtle sexism at play, like he believes that every male backend engineer is calling every male frontend engineer a sissy or something.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  See also: “reverse racism”.
torstenvl 3y ago
I'm not even convinced front-end is devalued. We spend way more grooming time on user experience than database structure. We spend way more testing time on section 508/ADA compliance than on backup audits. I'm sure there are places where front end is devalued, such as internal business software, but nobody is hiring out consultants at $500/hr to "rebrand" their PHP variable or MySQL column naming conventions.
lionelw 3y ago
>You aren't "programming the presentation logic", you're configuring the browser. Under-appreciation of frontend skills in action. Do you think of "presentation logic" as an oxymoron? I think many people can't see HTML, CSS and even SQL of backend land as programming languages, because they don't think declarative Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) count, don't think of their specificity and limitations as design strengths, and because each one is super easy learn to start but the rest of the enormous iceberg is so often ignored.
- acureau 3y ago
  No, I don't. I consider presentation logic to be the browser code parsing those configurations. Many people "can't see" HTML, CSS, or SQL as programming languages because they aren't programming languages. When you write markup, database queries, and styles you are factually not programming. This is fine, it does not devalue those skills in any way. That being said, to my knowledge front-end developers generally are JavaScript programmers. I consider front-end developers to be programmers.

amiantos 3y ago

Author seems desperate to tie sexism into everything which is weird considering software engineering has been dominated for men so long I am not sure how he comes to the conclusion there is some sort of subtle sexism at play, like he believes that every male backend engineer is calling every male frontend engineer a sissy or something.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
See also: “reverse racism”.

torstenvl 3y ago

I'm not even convinced front-end is devalued. We spend way more grooming time on user experience than database structure. We spend way more testing time on section 508/ADA compliance than on backup audits. I'm sure there are places where front end is devalued, such as internal business software, but nobody is hiring out consultants at $500/hr to "rebrand" their PHP variable or MySQL column naming conventions.

lionelw 3y ago

>You aren't "programming the presentation logic", you're configuring the browser. Under-appreciation of frontend skills in action. Do you think of "presentation logic" as an oxymoron? I think many people can't see HTML, CSS and even SQL of backend land as programming languages, because they don't think declarative Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) count, don't think of their specificity and limitations as design strengths, and because each one is super easy learn to start but the rest of the enormous iceberg is so often ignored.

acureau 3y ago
No, I don't. I consider presentation logic to be the browser code parsing those configurations. Many people "can't see" HTML, CSS, or SQL as programming languages because they aren't programming languages. When you write markup, database queries, and styles you are factually not programming. This is fine, it does not devalue those skills in any way. That being said, to my knowledge front-end developers generally are JavaScript programmers. I consider front-end developers to be programmers.