Comment by yuchi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yuchi | Hacker News Reader

I’m gonna put here a timid «I call bs on this».

First of all: HTML+CSS is indeed pretty complex. When you care for A11y, Responsiveness, Performance, Maintenability, complexity rises as a cartesian product.

But if you introduce interactions, the complexities rise by orders of magnitude.

To keep up with those complexities, you need to have a strong engineering background in concurrent/event-driven programming. Because that’s what a UI is.

So a HTML+CSS developer is all good till they need to add a dropdown, or any interactive component. Then you either know how to manage that complexity, or you’re gonna introduce technical dept to the project (or just pass responsibility).

In reality, what I saw, is that developers focused on front-end usually can perfectly learn on the spot what they need to keep their HTML+CSS accessible or responsive. When they have a knowledge gap is usually for past disinterest.

On the other hand, HTML+CSS developers usually have a hard limit when talking about interaction.

So, when I’m searching for developers, I look for the skill super-set, because I can make a HTML+CSS dev out of a FE dev, not the opposite.

I don't think the article is advocating that that designers can just code up some HTML and CSS as a substitute for FE devs. Specialists are necessary, but so are people who can span disciplines, like designers who can do some HTML and CSS. https://chiefexecutive.net/ideo-ceo-tim-brown-t-shaped-stars... If the designer codes up his design, finds problems, and makes improvements, that's time saved for the FE engineer, and eliminates some conflicts like https://library.gv.com/why-you-should-move-that-button-3px-t... It's also faster for the FE engineer to start with working code as opposed to a Sketch or Zeplin document.

Having said that, maybe you're responding to one part of the article, and I'm responding to another, so we're talking past each other.

I think you're right that being really good at HTML/CSS/design is hard AND being really good at writing complicated UI code in JS is hard. They're both hard problems (or can be!). Where I disagree is that moving from an expertise in one to another is asymmetric (JS -> HTML/CSS [easy], HTML/CSS -> JS [hard]). I think it just depends on a person's interests. Some people really only care about the complicated logic so they'll stick to the JS side of things. Some really only care about design and visual aspect so they'll stick to HTML/CSS. Some people can do both very well. And of course there's a million permutations in between. What matters the most I think is whether a person's interested. If a person is interested they'll learn anything eventually. That and likely they'll learn it better than someone who's not interested who's had more time/experience.

I think when you're going to hire someone you should try and screen for interest in the things you need them to do. That and screen for a proven ability to learn things quickly (cognitive ability). That or you take a calculated risk when hiring.

My comment a little bit rushed. What I meant is not that an HTML+CSS dev cannot move to the other side, but that the frontend developers I saw in the last ten years falled in the one of the two categories. Those willing to move to UI/app development already did — or are vocal about wanting to do it.

Totally quote on hiring.

I don't want to diminish your comment, but we've been able to do pure HTML/CSS dropdowns for awhile now. That was actually a coding test I took back in 2014.

I strongly disagree with your last line as well. Coming from, and knowing many of my colleagues that started as HTML+CSS dev, that went into jQuery -> Backbone -> SPA frameworks -> ES6. It's definitely possible, but it depends if the person (or candidate) has the passion and aptitude to pursue that path.

I used dropdowns as an example for a deceivingly simple UI element. You cannot build a complete dropdown without JS: you need to track keyboard events.

As I answered the other sibling comment: those developers already are UI/app devs in my classification.

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