Comment by rimantas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rimantas | Hacker News Reader

Article is funny in a funny way: it kind of gets the gist right, but every single point is debatable.

#1: same applies to back-end too.

#2: why not? And why is that front-end is specialist and back-end is generalist? This point is very weak, and I'd say that the main problem with back-end specialist coming to front-end is the tendency to dismiss it as "easy".

#3: I have both. And prototype. Good JS developer does not make good front-end engineer. Experience with popular frameworks is a plus. Also, if you know jQuery you will know your CSS selectors—that's a plus.

#4: Author has a point there. I'd not say good F-EE must be an artist, but a good taste and design sense is a huge plus: with those qualities one can see misalignments, broken rhythm, stray font, etc. without the need of designer to point at that.

#5: Wrong. A good front-end engineer must be able to operate those three separate layers: structure (HTML), presentation (CSS), behavior(JS). There is very little of that in print, not to mention other qualities that fundamentally differ.

>>#5: Wrong. A good front-end engineer must be able to operate those three separate layers: structure (HTML), presentation (CSS), behavior(JS). There is very little of that in print, not to mention other qualities that fundamentally differ.

Nah. The original point of #5 was

If you want to find good front-end engineers, look to the newspaper and print industry.

This is because every design -- print or graphic-- needs a logical FLOW, visually. People who migrated from (or started in) print know this, and it ultimately makes the end user experience better. Knowing the three layers is obviously necessary, but I don't think that's the point the author was pointing out with respect to that data.

Yes. This is exactly what I intended. Thank you for clarifying.

You are welcome. Must stick up for print people; my design career technically began in middle school, on the yearbook staff. It is hard to forgot those basic fundamentals when they are drilled in so young. Even today I spend far more time pondering pixels, margin widths, font sizes, fonts, padding, etc than any normal person should.

HTML (structure) - Page layout

CSS (presentation) - InDesign has style-sheets as well but they are different in some fundamental respects.

JS (behavior) - Using fundamental design rules a designer can have a measure of control over how the viewer "behaves". Dynamic white space, focal points etc.

I think any print designer can be a good front end engineer if they have enough desire to do so.

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