Spellbook of Modern Web Dev | Hacker News Reader

Spellbook of Modern Web Dev

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47 pointsdexteryy17 comments

As a beginner, stuff like this is more overwhelming than useful. It would be more valuable if it instead clustered resources by what to start with, and maybe a timeline (i.e. "Week one, read these 10 articles"). It's just grouped by topic, rather than "what to read first."

On that note, I can recommend the "GrabSE Front End Guide" at https://github.com/grab/front-end-guide , based on Sacha Greif's "A Study Plan to Cure Javascript Fatigue" article at https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-study-plan-to-cure-javascr... . It has exactly that ordered list of concepts and links with timelines that you're looking for.

I also have a more specifically-targeted list of links for React, Redux, and related topics like ES6, functional programming, and Webpack, at https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links . Specifically intended to be a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the ecosystem, as well as a solid source of good info on more advanced topics. The front page of my list has a "best-of / getting started" subset of links, and then the rest of the repo is grouped by topic.

Thank you!

> This document originated from a bunch of most commonly used links and learning resources I sent to every new web developer on our full-stack web development team.

What the idea behind of that? Are you using all this tools, services or whatever? And how do you manage to stay up to date on such a wide area of stuff?

Had someone ask me a similar question today on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/m_plis/status/874319058698735616 ):

> @acemarke your react-redux-links repo is a godsend. how do you keep up with all the articles that the community puts out?

My reply:

> Wayyyyyy too much time spent reading, bookmarking, and organizing :) The "to add" queue has been bouncing between 100-200 items lately. Comments like yours definitely encourage me to keep up with it, though :) As I've said, 1-man project, would love help, but don't expect it.

It's interesting that Node.js is mentioned quite a bit but php or python aren't mentioned at all. Node is a great and powerful tool, but is not the only tool in the tool shed.

Worth noting that the author points out that the document originated as a set of links he was sending to new developers on his team; this "spellbook" likely says more about his team than it does modern web development.

Thank you for curating!

what's with all these resources lately that are just a bunch of links? what value are you adding? you realize we have search engines now right? we don't need directories.

This one says 'Spellbook' though, so it's cooler.

Generally it's that all the resources are located in one place, and hopefully someone has actually looked at the links and decided they're of sufficient quality to include in the list. Having one place to look makes it easier for someone to read through things, rather than having to search and evaluate articles and resources themselves (especially as a new learner).

I agree with this, that the added value of lists like these is that it's "curated" - a person collected these links over time, gathered from various sources including search results, while filtering for quality subjectively.

Yeah. I've also seen complaints that some lists (including my own) have _too many_ links. Yes, I'd agree that a curated list with hundreds of links can still be overwhelming, but it's sort of a repeat of the Wikipedia "inclusionists vs deletionists" argument. I'm not trying to limit my list to the "top 5" articles in each subcategory or anything like that - I'm looking at each article by itself, and deciding if it's informative, relevant, and of value. I've also done refactoring on the list over time, adding new sub-categories, breaking out separate category pages, etc, to better capture the information.

It's still very much a "curated" list, it's just that I've done a _lot_ of curation :)

I think the structure and relations of this bunch of links are a kind of knowledge. And in this information-overloaded age, they are playing an increasingly significant role.

And in the age of artificial intelligence, a lot of problems require a combination of the works of machines and humans. Google can't provide a professional and insightful knowledge structure on its own. But more documents like this one maybe will help a new class of smarter production. Actually I myself am working on the similar production.

Additionally, unlike many extra-long "awesome list", I just pick one or a few links for each nested "category" which are the most mainstream and not outdated, based on the clear trends, public data, and experience. They are not trivial collections.

Those search engine rankings are determined to a large extent by directories.

What are you doing on HN, that's basically a link aggregator?!

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