from Hacker News

The Cool Front-End Developer

by chavesn on 7/14/15, 10:06 PM with 29 comments

  • by kbody on 7/14/15, 11:09 PM

    There is no need to always create an "opposite"-view post in response to other "controversial" posts.

    Can't wait for "The Pragmatic Front-End Developer" to pop-up in a few days.

    Bottom line, we should focus on discussion that progresses our craft and not superficial rivalries. Take for example the excellent Pure UI by rauchg [1] (at the very least check the first footnote of the article, a true engineer in mind)

    [1]: http://rauchg.com/2015/pure-ui

  • by chavesn on 7/14/15, 11:47 PM

    Yesterday, when The Boring Front-end Developer was posted, the top commentary[1] seemed generally critical of the change-averse attitude. The TL;DR was "this is technology industry, new stuff is good. Get used to it."

    Front-end code preprocessors, recent build systems and package managers, new-age frameworks (Angular), "Universal JS", and SPAs would all fit into this category.

    Some tend to be skeptical, some are evangelists. There is a line in the sand, and while most developers don't fall clearly on either side, taken in aggregate, the line is visible.

    I quite liked the BFED post. However, I submitted this because I think it makes persuasive counter-points.

    Given the negative tone yesterday, I thought the crowd here might be more receptive to the more forward-thinking mindset. What's fascinating to me is that, even with nearly directly opposing viewpoints, the commentary on both HN discussion threads is actually quite critical.

    [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9879172

  • by TheBiv on 7/14/15, 11:20 PM

    Every time a popular opinion blog comes around that has an opposing opinion come out, I always wonder if these archetypes do actually help to advance the field they're talking about. Meaning, I do actually find it helpful to read about how people are defining their value while performing their skill. Does anyone else find these opposing opinions helpful or do you just see them as wasteful drivel?

    Granted, this is just a blog post, so the author isn't probably isn't actively trying to craft a faction amongst front end developers.

  • by stuaxo on 7/15/15, 6:11 AM

    Somebody needs to concentrate on the boring stuff... in particular, making sure all the stuff on npm etc actually works...

    The few times I try and use "hipster stuff", like yeoman generators, they don't really work out the box, and it feels like I could have spent that time manually getting things working, also a lot of complexity is added.

    In a similar way, the churn rate of JS libs is just absolutely insane.

    From - a boring backend developer.

  • by at-fates-hands on 7/14/15, 11:12 PM

    He forgot the part about jumping on every new JS library bandwagon when its still in beta and impressing all his friends with a new framework nobody has heard of.

  • by serve_yay on 7/15/15, 12:43 AM

    One thing the "boring/cool" divide doesn't capture is that a certain amount of the so-called cool kid shit involves an attempt to revive computing ideas that are about 50 years old.

  • by ForHackernews on 7/14/15, 11:06 PM

    No one cares. You're not cool. Shave your beard.

  • by kvcrawford on 7/15/15, 12:24 AM

    TIL I am cool. Finally!