3 ms·

I'm going based on the hundreds of web developers I've interviewed over the past few years. These include people with no formal training, through to people with

I'm going based on the hundreds of web developers I've interviewed over the past few years. These include people with no formal training, through to people with a decade or more of experience. While I don't specifically ask for experience with jQuery in job postings, there have only been a small handful of those candidates who have never used it. But even they have often just focused on using YUI, MooTools, Dojo, or some other similar framework instead. The "changing times" the article author talks about happened years ago when it comes to these frameworks. The same goes for HTML5, minifying, REST, and basically everything else he listed. These concepts are common knowledge these days, and basically everyone in the field that I've deal with has been aware of them, and in most cases has actively used them. I really don't know what to say to you, if you actually are a web developer and you found many of those concepts to be new. A lot of what the article author lists are pretty well-established and widely-used. "Changing times" doesn't really apply at all well after the change has happened.

mgkimsal 14y ago
The author explicitly called out .NET developers (" and I see a lot of web developers still lagging behind especially in the .NET world.") So do I. A trip to my local .net user group last month had presenter going over ASP.NET MVC v4 and some of the reactions and comments were... hard to believe. I'm not saying all .NET devs are behind the times, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of them, based on my own anecdotal info from attendance at various conferences and user groups over the last couple years. We get sucked in to the bubble of HN, and the majority of people we interact with on various boards/forums/etc are indeed aware of these technologies, but they do not (yet?) represent the majority of developers.
- krmmalik 14y ago
  Agreed. The problem always seems more pronounced when it comes .Net. In my own observation, it seems to be a culture/mindset that gets adopted, and I have to say, I feel it's largely driven by Microsoft. This whole idea of developing everything yourself, not paying as much attention to subtleties in UI and so on. If you notice most .Net blogs, they're mostly behind the times when it comes to this stuff. It's like when Ruby on Rails came out, there seemed to be this notion that because something was developed in Ruby, that was the reason why it was "pretty", yet it just happened a culture driven by 37Signals and so the result was that a large portion of Ruby work was decent looking. In the same vain, I feel Microsoft has set a particular culture in motion when it comes .Net. Disclaimer: I realise these are generalisations and i may have a skewed view, but these have been my observations for the last several years.
- amazedsaint 14y ago
  Thank you for answering this for me. Even the trigger for this post was a series of interviews I did for .NET web developers in the last few weeks.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    The number of devs I hear complaining about "but but but... I want my webforms!" when confronted with "use a client-side JS tool with REST/AJAX/etc" is staggering. How do they think the rest of the world works? Adopting these 'new fangled' approaches will increase their ability to move between worlds - perhaps even leaving the .NET compound from time to time. And perhaps more importantly, it will make it easier for people already skilled in front-end JS to contribute more effectively on otherwise-.NET-only teams. You will almost never find top-notch JS talent (freelance or full-time) who also know how to interop with webforms and older ASP.NET tech. Widen the pool, by changing your practices, and you'll be able to compete more effectively.

mgkimsal 14y ago

The author explicitly called out .NET developers (" and I see a lot of web developers still lagging behind especially in the .NET world.") So do I. A trip to my local .net user group last month had presenter going over ASP.NET MVC v4 and some of the reactions and comments were... hard to believe. I'm not saying all .NET devs are behind the times, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of them, based on my own anecdotal info from attendance at various conferences and user groups over the last couple years. We get sucked in to the bubble of HN, and the majority of people we interact with on various boards/forums/etc are indeed aware of these technologies, but they do not (yet?) represent the majority of developers.

krmmalik 14y ago
Agreed. The problem always seems more pronounced when it comes .Net. In my own observation, it seems to be a culture/mindset that gets adopted, and I have to say, I feel it's largely driven by Microsoft. This whole idea of developing everything yourself, not paying as much attention to subtleties in UI and so on. If you notice most .Net blogs, they're mostly behind the times when it comes to this stuff. It's like when Ruby on Rails came out, there seemed to be this notion that because something was developed in Ruby, that was the reason why it was "pretty", yet it just happened a culture driven by 37Signals and so the result was that a large portion of Ruby work was decent looking. In the same vain, I feel Microsoft has set a particular culture in motion when it comes .Net. Disclaimer: I realise these are generalisations and i may have a skewed view, but these have been my observations for the last several years.
amazedsaint 14y ago
Thank you for answering this for me. Even the trigger for this post was a series of interviews I did for .NET web developers in the last few weeks.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  The number of devs I hear complaining about "but but but... I want my webforms!" when confronted with "use a client-side JS tool with REST/AJAX/etc" is staggering. How do they think the rest of the world works? Adopting these 'new fangled' approaches will increase their ability to move between worlds - perhaps even leaving the .NET compound from time to time. And perhaps more importantly, it will make it easier for people already skilled in front-end JS to contribute more effectively on otherwise-.NET-only teams. You will almost never find top-notch JS talent (freelance or full-time) who also know how to interop with webforms and older ASP.NET tech. Widen the pool, by changing your practices, and you'll be able to compete more effectively.