Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

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Until recently, front end development meant knowing how to use HTML and CSS, same thing with web design.

I remember in ~2013 telling someone who was getting into web design that they should also focus on learning JavaScript, or even CoffeeScript, because just HTML and CSS weren't going to cut it in the future.

I also remember getting into a discussion with a manager in ~2018 who opined that they liked the fact that front end development now meant having to understand JavaScript, and things like React, because it meant they could hire "real engineers" for the front end.

I'm not a fan of that trend, and still kind of lament that a lot of people were forced out of web development because they didn't see the writing on the wall. And I can't really blame them, because at the time, schools were still selling students on web dev & design tracts that strayed away from traditional CS, and focused more on HTML, CSS and UI/UX over programming.

I've been a webmaster for 25 years and never had to learn JS. The vast, vast majority of websites on the internet could have been designed by someone like me who doesn't know JS.

Everything is already in a framework or library, and copypasting a few lines of code from the readme/howto is enough to add a slideshow, accordion menu, or whatever other snazzy but terrible UI gimmick that clients want.

The proportion of websites on the internet that actually need React are close to zero (most sites are cms/crud instead of "real" web apps), yet if you're in the web dev sphere, everything everyone else is building seems to need it. Strange.

The zero-knowledge, copy/paste frontend development you’re describing is a big part of why so much of the web is such a bloated mess. It’s certainly not React or other FE frameworks that are the problem. At least not in and of themselves.

> why so much of the web is such a bloated mess.

Citation needed. IMO most of the bloat comes from ad networks and tracking.

I agree with all of this, yet I can't in good faith tell others who are looking to get a job in this field that they don't need to learn JS, React etc. Most employers are basically only hiring React devs for the front end, to build projects that really don't need it. I'm not a fan of it, but it is what it is.

There's a bifurcation when some of the jobs that used to be done by HTML/CSS webdevs is getting done by engineers writing Javascript, but many (IMHO most) of the earlier 'webmaster' tasks are now effectively done by someone putting content in what-you-see-is-what-you-get CMS.

Webdev has automated the easy parts so much that they need zero development and the main skill needed is in writing good content; and the only stuff that does require actual webdev is those things which are not so simple to become a function in some premade system.

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