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The problem with web development isn't that there is a resurgence of bad development practices. It's that the average web developer isn't as skilled as what the

by pippy 12y ago

The problem with web development isn't that there is a resurgence of bad development practices. It's that the average web developer isn't as skilled as what they need to be. The average U.S. worker spends 4.6 years in a given career, and yet it takes ~5 years to master a framework. The average computer science grad earns much more than a web developer, so the skill set required for proper development is often lacking. Add into the mix cheap offshore labour, poorly made "out of the box" web packages aimed at medium-small business, and inexperienced "geeks" who build poor websites on the cheap. Given the skill set required for professional level web development is on par with software development, it's no surprise the role isn't getting the skilled people the career requires.

adamnemecek 12y ago
> yet it takes ~5 years to master a framework Are we talking about web frameworks? Because it sure doesn't take 5 years to master most web frameworks.
- maemilius 12y ago
  If you apply yourself, I agree. The problem is really that, when you're just trying to get a job done, you often don't run into all the edge cases and weird shit that can happen or even some of the less common error states. It really comes down to how complex your project is and how integral the framework is to it.
nerfhammer 12y ago
> yet it takes ~5 years to master a framework kinda hard when frameworks completely refactor themselves or fall out of style within 18 months
aikah 12y ago
> It's that the average web developer isn't as skilled as what they need to be. The problem isn't skills, the problem is developers wanting to use their shiny new toys just to show off.It has nothing to do with skills. It's how people use the tools they have at their disposal. A larger problem in my opinion is the victory of HTML5 against XHTML2. XHTML2 would have solved a whole lot of problems developers are still trying to solve by abusing javascript or writing specs like web components that just look like "the vengeance of XHTML2".
- lstamour 12y ago
  Okay, I'll bite. Why not use XHTML 1.1 if you want to add your own validating DTD? The reason we went HTML5 is because the validator mattered only until it stopped being important. People realized that, for end-user use cases, they want to see website content in their browsers, not "this page is not valid XML" error messages. And weren't web components pushed aside to HTML 5.1 since it's not finalized and we wanted to call work on "HTML 5" completed? And I fail to see how XHTML, being simple markup, would do anything to assist with an AJAX call. It's HTML5 that you have to thank for the async and defer attributes for scripts, that reduced some of the need to use anonymous functions to do the same thing. Effectively, HTML5 has been as much about speeding up browsers as speeding up web development--and in the process, the user's happy too because they have no idea what's happening inside their browser, but things stay compatible. After all, no one was updating old sites to be XHTML-compliant and yes, there were too many non-validating sites. So we just stopped worrying about validation as much, as far as XML goes.
crdoconnor 12y ago
>The problem with web development isn't that there is a resurgence of bad development practices. It's that the average web developer isn't as skilled as what they need to be. 5 years of experience with angular wouldn't teach you that there are certain use cases where it should never be used.

by pippy 12y ago

adamnemecek 12y ago

> yet it takes ~5 years to master a framework Are we talking about web frameworks? Because it sure doesn't take 5 years to master most web frameworks.

maemilius 12y ago
If you apply yourself, I agree. The problem is really that, when you're just trying to get a job done, you often don't run into all the edge cases and weird shit that can happen or even some of the less common error states. It really comes down to how complex your project is and how integral the framework is to it.

nerfhammer 12y ago

> yet it takes ~5 years to master a framework kinda hard when frameworks completely refactor themselves or fall out of style within 18 months

aikah 12y ago

> It's that the average web developer isn't as skilled as what they need to be. The problem isn't skills, the problem is developers wanting to use their shiny new toys just to show off.It has nothing to do with skills. It's how people use the tools they have at their disposal. A larger problem in my opinion is the victory of HTML5 against XHTML2. XHTML2 would have solved a whole lot of problems developers are still trying to solve by abusing javascript or writing specs like web components that just look like "the vengeance of XHTML2".

lstamour 12y ago
Okay, I'll bite. Why not use XHTML 1.1 if you want to add your own validating DTD? The reason we went HTML5 is because the validator mattered only until it stopped being important. People realized that, for end-user use cases, they want to see website content in their browsers, not "this page is not valid XML" error messages. And weren't web components pushed aside to HTML 5.1 since it's not finalized and we wanted to call work on "HTML 5" completed? And I fail to see how XHTML, being simple markup, would do anything to assist with an AJAX call. It's HTML5 that you have to thank for the async and defer attributes for scripts, that reduced some of the need to use anonymous functions to do the same thing. Effectively, HTML5 has been as much about speeding up browsers as speeding up web development--and in the process, the user's happy too because they have no idea what's happening inside their browser, but things stay compatible. After all, no one was updating old sites to be XHTML-compliant and yes, there were too many non-validating sites. So we just stopped worrying about validation as much, as far as XML goes.

crdoconnor 12y ago

>The problem with web development isn't that there is a resurgence of bad development practices. It's that the average web developer isn't as skilled as what they need to be. 5 years of experience with angular wouldn't teach you that there are certain use cases where it should never be used.