6 ms·

The perfect storm of on the one side junior developers who are afraid of writing even trivial code and are glad if there's a package implementing functionality

The perfect storm of on the one side junior developers who are afraid of writing even trivial code and are glad if there's a package implementing functionality that can be done in a one-liner, and on the other side (often junior) developers who want to prove themselves and think the best way to do that is to publish a successful npm package

bobthepanda 1y ago
The blessing and curse of frontend development is that there basically isn't a barrier to entry given that you can make some basic CSS/JS/HTML and have your browser render it immediately. There's also the flavor of frontend developer that came from the backend and sneers at actually having to learn frontend because "it's not real development"
- pxc 1y ago
 > There's also the flavor of frontend developer that came from the backend and sneers at actually having to learn frontend because "it's not real development" What kind of code does this developer write?
 - garbagepatch 1y ago
 As little code as possible to get the job done without enormous dependencies. Avoiding js and using css and html as much as possible.
 - sfn42 1y ago
 Sounds like the perfect frontend dev to me.
 - cluckindan 1y ago
 The designer, the customer, and US/EU accessibility laws heavily disagree.
 Philadelphia 1y ago
 How is javascript required for accessibility? I wasn’t aware of that.
 boesboes 1y ago
 It is not. In fact, it is all the modern design sensibilities and front-end frameworks that make it nearly impossible to make accessible things. We once had the rule HTML should be purely semantic and all styling should be in CSS. It was brilliant, even though not everything looked as fancy as today.
 cluckindan 1y ago
 JS is in fact required for AA level compliance in some cases, usually to retain/move focus appropriately, or to provide expected keyboard controls. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/#client-side-script https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/#client-side-script Also, when was that semantic HTML rule? You make it sound like ancient history, but semantic HTML has only been a thing since HTML5 (2008).
 lexicality 1y ago
 You only need to use scripts to move focus and provide keyboard controls if you have done something to mess with the focus and break the standard browser keyboard controls. If you're using HTML/CSS sensibly then it's accessible from the get-go by dint of the browser being accessible. > Also, when was that semantic HTML rule? You make it sound like ancient history, but semantic HTML has only been a thing since HTML5 (2008). HTML5 added a million new tags, but HTML4 had plenty of semantic tags that people regularly ignored and replaced with <div>, for example , , <blockquote>...
 kbolino 1y ago
 IMO is a terrible example. For ca. ten years, the advice was to pointlessly "replace with and with " and it utterly screwed over most new web developers' understanding of semantic tags. There are many reasons to use italics (and they vary between languages) but "emphasis" is just one of them, and none of the others ever materialized as tags. It would have been far better to have recommended and and etc. than to have added the tag and said "just use it instead of ".
 - lodovic 1y ago
 Usually they write only prompts and then accept whatever is generated, ignoring all typing and linting issues
 - 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
 Prompts? React and Angular came out over 10 years ago. The left pad incident happened in 2016. Let me assure you, devs were skeptical about all this well before AI.
 - bobthepanda 1y ago
 In my experience, generally speaking there is a kind of this developer that tries to write a language they’re familiar with, but in Javascript. As the pithy saying goes, it takes a lot of skill to write Java in every language.
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
 Ha, that's a funny attitude. And here I was thinking, that mostly doing backend work, I rather make the best out of the situation, if I have to do frontend dev, and try to do "real development" by writing trivial things myself, instead of worsening the situation by gluing together mountains of bloat.
whstl 1y ago
People pushing random throwaway packages is not the issue. A lot of the culture is built by certain people who make a living out of package maximalism. More packages == more eyballs == more donations. They have an agenda that small packages are good and made PRs into popular packages to inject their junk into the supply chain.

bobthepanda 1y ago

The blessing and curse of frontend development is that there basically isn't a barrier to entry given that you can make some basic CSS/JS/HTML and have your browser render it immediately. There's also the flavor of frontend developer that came from the backend and sneers at actually having to learn frontend because "it's not real development"

pxc 1y ago
> There's also the flavor of frontend developer that came from the backend and sneers at actually having to learn frontend because "it's not real development" What kind of code does this developer write?
- garbagepatch 1y ago
 As little code as possible to get the job done without enormous dependencies. Avoiding js and using css and html as much as possible.
 - sfn42 1y ago
 Sounds like the perfect frontend dev to me.
 - cluckindan 1y ago
 The designer, the customer, and US/EU accessibility laws heavily disagree.
 - Philadelphia 1y ago
 How is javascript required for accessibility? I wasn’t aware of that.
 boesboes 1y ago
 It is not. In fact, it is all the modern design sensibilities and front-end frameworks that make it nearly impossible to make accessible things. We once had the rule HTML should be purely semantic and all styling should be in CSS. It was brilliant, even though not everything looked as fancy as today.
 cluckindan 1y ago
 JS is in fact required for AA level compliance in some cases, usually to retain/move focus appropriately, or to provide expected keyboard controls. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/#client-side-script https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/#client-side-script Also, when was that semantic HTML rule? You make it sound like ancient history, but semantic HTML has only been a thing since HTML5 (2008).
 lexicality 1y ago
 You only need to use scripts to move focus and provide keyboard controls if you have done something to mess with the focus and break the standard browser keyboard controls. If you're using HTML/CSS sensibly then it's accessible from the get-go by dint of the browser being accessible. > Also, when was that semantic HTML rule? You make it sound like ancient history, but semantic HTML has only been a thing since HTML5 (2008). HTML5 added a million new tags, but HTML4 had plenty of semantic tags that people regularly ignored and replaced with <div>, for example , , <blockquote>...
 kbolino 1y ago
 IMO is a terrible example. For ca. ten years, the advice was to pointlessly "replace with and with " and it utterly screwed over most new web developers' understanding of semantic tags. There are many reasons to use italics (and they vary between languages) but "emphasis" is just one of them, and none of the others ever materialized as tags. It would have been far better to have recommended and and etc. than to have added the tag and said "just use it instead of ".
- lodovic 1y ago
 Usually they write only prompts and then accept whatever is generated, ignoring all typing and linting issues
 - 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
 Prompts? React and Angular came out over 10 years ago. The left pad incident happened in 2016. Let me assure you, devs were skeptical about all this well before AI.
- bobthepanda 1y ago
 In my experience, generally speaking there is a kind of this developer that tries to write a language they’re familiar with, but in Javascript. As the pithy saying goes, it takes a lot of skill to write Java in every language.
zelphirkalt 1y ago
Ha, that's a funny attitude. And here I was thinking, that mostly doing backend work, I rather make the best out of the situation, if I have to do frontend dev, and try to do "real development" by writing trivial things myself, instead of worsening the situation by gluing together mountains of bloat.

whstl 1y ago

People pushing random throwaway packages is not the issue. A lot of the culture is built by certain people who make a living out of package maximalism. More packages == more eyballs == more donations. They have an agenda that small packages are good and made PRs into popular packages to inject their junk into the supply chain.