The fact you think 300+ people are applying to the same jobs means the market might be saturated with those skills. Do you think you might have let your own skill set stagnate?
yes, definitely.
although i worked a lot with node and react, building electron apps, cli tools, browsers extensions - but i just don't enjoy it anymore. and i don't have experience building large scale production apps with the latest trendy stacks.
> The fact you think 300+ people are applying to the same jobs means the market might be saturated with those skills.
Basically front-end jobs, senior front-end also. Most jobs I see on linkedin have applications in the mid triple figures, its not even worth applying.
The only time I interview is when a company contacts me directly. I usually give up after they send the coding challenge link. i just stare at the screen, no energy or enthusiasm to tackle the problem. i enjoy html, css and vanilla js - but its usually some typescript challenge or something like that - which i refused to learn, since i already know javascript. once static type checking became a requirement in front end is like the intersection for when i became a dinosaur.
Although I am working now as a contractor for FAANG.
As you've mentioned in the title, you're depressed.
Go and see a therapist and if you can, take a break from work.
Why? Static type checking is a good thing to reduce errors.
For people who've been dealing with JS for years it's a big improvement which I guess is why it gets so much praise. (The love for React, OTOH, must be Stockholm Syndrome!)
Other languages are better, but transpiling from them to JS has (arguably?) bigger downsides than using TS. WASM is the big hope for some people, of course, but it's only really good for heavy lifting at the moment.
If it takes a long blog post to find something to criticize about TypeScript then I'd say that's a sign that TypeScript is doing something right.
I have learned and can read and write typescript, but it doesn’t click when it comes to “we’ll need it tomorrow to check our ideas fast”, the usual mode of startup operation. These stories about night and day difference also do not match my reality. All my code paths are either hot or tested. How many type-related bugs have I encountered last year? Maybe a few, but can’t remember even a single one. Maybe I’ll gradually type it after we go into maintenance mode, maybe leave it as an exercise to a maintainer if they see fit. My last few projects were successful and brought solid revenue without any type-related issues.
Show me some actual measurements that TypeScript increases time to market. I don't believe you have any.
Telling someone to use language A because it's much better than language B that the person is comfortable with is not a very good approach. You can get into the objective reasons as to why but for some it might be difficult to really understand.
I struggled with this when I was introduced to types as the entire concept was completely new to me. I had other ways I could think of to reduce errors (tests, more robust code, etc) and I wasn't sure how typescript could help me reduce errors any further or if it was worth learning a new (seemingly difficult) concept to deal with something I already felt I could deal with.
You can still do that with TypeScript and also get type checks, null checks, and just typos found for you by the compiler. Why wouldn't you want the compiler to do that for you? I don't want to do it, I want the tools to do it.
I doubt you are a dinosaur for not learning Typescript. You should be able to pickup Typescript if you are motivated, but that is hard to find when you are depressed. From your description it seems that you have all the background skills necessary, even though you have not had the energy to keep up with all the latest trends due to depression and other health issues.
As others said, you need to work on the root cause (maybe burnout or depression). You should contact a professional to help you manage this and get your energy back
Did you refuse to learn because it seems pointless, the interview excersize seems pointless or is it because it's overwhelming at this point in your career?
What works in the UK might not work somewhere else and vice versa.
Regarding typescript, I've been writing JS on and off since '99 and I picked up TS last year. It's actually good. Not everything new is shit, just most of it!
"Coding challenge as a first-stage filter" is something I'd like to see disappear, why would I want to work for a company that shows so little respect for people's time? I guess the answer is "$$££€€", which makes sense only when there's a ton of $£€ on offer.
I generally skip those companies on principle. For better or worse...