Web Frameworks/Development
I'm not a web developer. A large part of that has always been because it sucks. Being a web developer doesn't mean building some rinky-dink HTML5 only web page. There is a market for that kind of work, but the people who can deliver are a dime a dozen. A real web developer is building rich internet applications.
And the problem there is twofold. There is no one language that does everything (even if you consider composite frameworks), and because of that, setting them up is a giant pain in the ass. I'm honestly surprised every time I hear that the number 1 job for suicides is NOT web developers. I would go mad in that field.
I was also thinking today about soft skills that a web developer needs vs. those an applications developer needs and how they differ. And one of the things I reflected on was that, for the reasons mentioned above, the dominant web development frameworks seem to completely change every 3-5 years meaning web developers need to be really good at picking up new languages or at least new frameworks. And then on twitter today someone linked this article and the timing was too amusing to pass up.
It is amazing to see the problem summed up exactly as I had envisioned it by someone who actually does that sort of work. It is also amazing to see the short-sightedness of it all. It talks about Rails and how it was great back in the day, but that how as other technologies got bolted on after the fact it became just as bad as the things it replaced or perhaps even as bad as having no composite framework to begin with. My words, not his.
Do you think the state of web development will stop? Absolutely not. New libraries that will become must-haves will trickle out. New concepts will emerge. And they will be bolted on after the fact to frameworks like Meteor. At first it will be one or two ugly-ducklings that don't add a lot of extra complexity. But then it will grow, and the core of what Meteor what it was today will either be ignored or such a small fraction of what the framework eventually does that it will become just as maddening as everything before it seems today.
It just seem futile. In a lot of ways you want to find an emerging platform to ensure that it will still be relevant for a while. But then you're taking a gamble that it won't get any traction and people will demand you use something else. You also don't want to jump on what is popular. Because, by the time it is popular enough to essentially be the de facto standard, it probably only has a good 3-5 years before it gets replaced.
There are other reasons I hate web development. But the ones above are why I don't even bother with it as a hobby. There is no value in honing skills that should I ever want to use them have a high probability of being defunct. I already get most of the development related soft skills from being a developer in any field. I use source control, work in groups, learn other peoples code and API's, etc.... The only value in learning a specific web framework is to be able to put that specific web framework on a resume. For that to be worth the effort invested, the skill needs to be relevant when I later want a job in that field.
And that means that no one has a longer list of skills that they invested time and money into and which they are proud of, but will probably end up being either a hindrance or irrelevant on a resume than a web developer.
And the problem there is twofold. There is no one language that does everything (even if you consider composite frameworks), and because of that, setting them up is a giant pain in the ass. I'm honestly surprised every time I hear that the number 1 job for suicides is NOT web developers. I would go mad in that field.
I was also thinking today about soft skills that a web developer needs vs. those an applications developer needs and how they differ. And one of the things I reflected on was that, for the reasons mentioned above, the dominant web development frameworks seem to completely change every 3-5 years meaning web developers need to be really good at picking up new languages or at least new frameworks. And then on twitter today someone linked this article and the timing was too amusing to pass up.
It is amazing to see the problem summed up exactly as I had envisioned it by someone who actually does that sort of work. It is also amazing to see the short-sightedness of it all. It talks about Rails and how it was great back in the day, but that how as other technologies got bolted on after the fact it became just as bad as the things it replaced or perhaps even as bad as having no composite framework to begin with. My words, not his.
Do you think the state of web development will stop? Absolutely not. New libraries that will become must-haves will trickle out. New concepts will emerge. And they will be bolted on after the fact to frameworks like Meteor. At first it will be one or two ugly-ducklings that don't add a lot of extra complexity. But then it will grow, and the core of what Meteor what it was today will either be ignored or such a small fraction of what the framework eventually does that it will become just as maddening as everything before it seems today.
It just seem futile. In a lot of ways you want to find an emerging platform to ensure that it will still be relevant for a while. But then you're taking a gamble that it won't get any traction and people will demand you use something else. You also don't want to jump on what is popular. Because, by the time it is popular enough to essentially be the de facto standard, it probably only has a good 3-5 years before it gets replaced.
There are other reasons I hate web development. But the ones above are why I don't even bother with it as a hobby. There is no value in honing skills that should I ever want to use them have a high probability of being defunct. I already get most of the development related soft skills from being a developer in any field. I use source control, work in groups, learn other peoples code and API's, etc.... The only value in learning a specific web framework is to be able to put that specific web framework on a resume. For that to be worth the effort invested, the skill needs to be relevant when I later want a job in that field.
And that means that no one has a longer list of skills that they invested time and money into and which they are proud of, but will probably end up being either a hindrance or irrelevant on a resume than a web developer.
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