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@black-kite bad management is everywhere. It’s not exclusive to web dev.
ostream’s frustration came from his pure dumbness and inability to differentiate between critique against the tech he’s working with and himself as a person.
I’m against bashing of web devs. But the web tech should absolutely be bashed. -
I completely agree. I don’t see the motivation in saying web devs are trash. I’ve done software dev before, and I would say it’s difficult in its own regard but effort wise pretty similar. I theorize it to be that the web dev market is outpacing other traditional software jobs and these people are worried about job security and money. I think management can be way worse in web dev because it’s really just fast solutions. There’s more of a turnaround with clients because stuff gets built faster. That in turn causes contractors and such to build the worst code bc all the monetary incentive is to build stuff as fast as humanly possible.
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It's not management, it's not deadlines, it's sheer incompetence and negligence. Here's why: it's actually more work to pull in all the unnecessary bloat and deal with it than not having that in the first place.
Except when it comes to ads grinding the website to a crawl, that's not in the FE's scope, but management ordering them to include that for monetisation, so I'll give FE a pass on that one. However, shit is stupidly bloated even with uBlock Origin. -
@shovethisrant It's one of ostream's accounts, just like "Slow-Yep". That guy is just butt-hurt for seeing FE called out, and that's because he is exactly one of the FEs who rightfully get flak. Means, incapable of taking that as motivation to do better than average - not that this would take much, given how low the bar for average is.
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@Fast-Nop what bloat are we talking about here though? I kinda disagree on that, because the ideal solution in web dev *generally* takes more time, there’s cases that it’s easier to do the best thing, but I think it’s the minority
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@shovethisrant Sure, going for the optimum is a matter of diminishing returns for increasingly much work. However, avoiding total crap from the beginning does not fall under this.
It's not extra work to realise that a website that isn't an app doesn't need a web app framework such as React.
Or indeed writing fucking valid HTML. You know, the language we routinely make jokes on because it's not even a programming language. Nevertheless, none of the US top-100 websites can even get that right because HTML is already too hard for FEs. -
@Lensflare yes I can imagine bad management exists in other IT fields as well. What I meant to say is that the standards web projects managers set for their teams are often low because of time and budget constraints, whereas some standards simply aren’t negotiable in other IT fields where machinery is involved for instance.
As for ostream, I can’t judge his work as I haven't seen any of it. He got pissed with people here. Doesn't tell me of if he's a dumb developer or not -
@black-kite take any other frontend development except the web:
Mobile (ios, android, cross platform), desktop. Or backend development. It’s the same level of risk (minimal) and a better comparison than stuff with machinery.
Same type of management and "needs to be done as fast as possible" mentality. So, what excuse does web dev have here? -
@Fast-Nop some of it is incompetence. But to me a lot of it comes down to: we need to get the job done quickly. Therefore we shall use this (over bloated) tool such as Bootstrap to work more efficiently. It provides everything you need to build responsive UI. It’s developed by Twitter engineers and they know better than you do about design and screen dimensions and blah blah blah…
But I agree with you. Many tools are over bloated and we end up having to work around them or even against them. -
@black-kite yes def - bootstrap should be burned tho
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@Fast-Nop yeah it’s a sad state - I think it’s a lack of incentive for developers to constantly educate themselves. IMO companies really need to invest in rewarding specific web developers who not only create cool shit, but primarily to incentivize solutions with expert quality and thought behind it.
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@black-kite That's the point - Bootstrap (or any other CSS framework) doesn't actually offer that benefit because re-using CSS in that way means you then have to pollute your whole markup with presentational litter, and getting that right takes actually longer.
The main issue: if you don't go that route, you have to actually know e.g. CSS and be able to write it. Well, but that should be a core skill for any FE dev in the first place, right? -
@shovethisrant My guess is that the whole FE domain is caught in a race to the bottom dominated by unskilled impostors - and the skilled folks get out of that rat race as soon as they can.
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I currently work in a well tested (like really well tested, because the ability of operation of a international company might be compromised) project. We have super strict code quality guidelines, to a point that we need to have multiple other reviewers, that go over changes of code, for it to even get into the actual testing. The building and deploying of the app is automated and everything. The dev work flow is super organized, if you can't do something properly, you cannot include it in the software (because you probably won't get it through review anyways) So by your argument that would be the best case scenario.
Let me tell you, that the fact that we use JS over atleast something like TS (or anything else as i said only a million times on dr before) with UI5 (which is way faster than react mind you)
it is still JS, that is the weakest link in this whole endavour. And the resaons for that i have reiterated numerous times thanks to ostream back then. -
@shovethisrant Btw., it's a similar issue that I've observed with Indian devs. It's not that they're dumb, it's that their industry puts strong incentives for capable folks to stop being devs, hence leaving the incapable ones in the dev domain.
That's why the best you can hope for is a bright Indian junior dev, and even then only until they inevitably leave the dev role to either become managers, or if they want to stay devs, leave the country altogether. -
@Fast-Nop idk I feel like that was the case a while ago due to the lack of accessibility of education, but now I keep meeting devs from all over the world including India who are super amazing devs.
I don’t think I’ll leave web dev for a minute - I meet bad and good devs. It’s a lot more stable than you think if you commit to the hustle + money progression has been insane. The main challenge is just knowing when and where to keep your cool when people do stupid shit. Otherwise you stand out, and then u are the target. -
@Fast-Nop 100% agree with you.
We were forced to use Bootstrap at my former job. Some of my colleagues had never used anything else but bootstrap and didn’t know the basics of css (I think I mentioned this in your rant about bootstrap) -
@thebiochemic crazy that in a company that values quality so much they never went down the route of Typescript rather than JS.
It kinda goes to prove my point though. Maybe using JS at the genesis of the project was a choice that was made for better velocity. Greenfield projects get up and running super quickly with JS, and stakeholders are happy (then everyone regrets real quickly) -
@shovethisrant right. I feel like we’re told to use these tools because we can’t be trusted to do a good job without them.
Rather than being given some time for training, we’re given tools that just increase our ignorance -
@black-kite doesn't prove your point though. They got the project up quickly, sure. But 80% of the usability tests (despite 100% test coverage in code tests) are failing on test env, because of how JS works. And for the most part, these devs (which are smart people, btw) have no idea where these problems come from, because frankly the chosen language won't tell them that. So the most time is put into searching and fixing bugs, instead of iterating on new features.
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@thebiochemic it partially proves my points about questionable choices that are made in web dev. The choice of JS over TS typically stems from the need to go fast (although any dev with a decent understanding of TS could go almost just as fast). I’m not disagreeing with you about the fact that the language is flawed in some areas.
I trust you at least respect developers in the field of web development. It sounds like you do and that you’re in it yourself with the joys and woes that it brings (now I’m sounding like gpt). -
i'm not criticising web devs.
i'm critizising javascript, which is the de facto standard, yes, but which is also complete and utter garbage in any aspect.
and i critizise people who don't realise that the only reason anyone likes javascript is stockholm syndrome.
we all deserve a better technology to do frontend. and there are soooooo many options we could use, if we just finally stopped glorifying js just because there was no alternative a decade ago. -
@black-kite well yeah i kinda do. What i usually don't understand is, how it's even possible that new projects still choose js as their language.
This language needs to be abolished from web dev alltogether. -
@tosensei what is the alternative u want to propose?
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@shovethisrant native and enforced TS for scripting and WASM for everything else.
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Keep your profile at 1997, @black-kite =D
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@scor so you’re 26? ;)
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@scor me neither
Many "purists" love to piss on JavaScript and web development. And to an extent I can understand ostream’s frustration with these people.
It’s easy to criticize because yes: many web projects are indeed shit.
But I’d like to argue that the reason why so many of these projects are crappy is because of bad management:
- unrealistic deadlines
- no clear testing strategy
- or no testing at all because of deadlines
- no time allotted to catch up on technical debt
- etc.
This type of management is far more commonplace in web projects because things need to get delivered quickly and if they’re delivered with bugs, it’s no big deal as lives aren’t at stake.
I doubt this type of management is tolerated in projects where you’re working on software for welding machines (for example), where the stakes are that "you’re expected not to kill anyone" (to quote demolishun)
So in these types of projects, management can’t tolerate anything much below perfection and thus has to adapt by setting realistic deadlines that take into account the need for quality processes and thorough testing.
If this type of management was more common in web development, I can guarantee that web applications would be much more reliable and of better quality.
I can also guarantee that poorly managed non-web projects as outlined above would be just shitty as many web products.
My point being that’s it’s really DUMB to criticize fellow devs that work with web technologies on the basis that the state of websites/web apps is a mess. It just so happens that JS is the language of the web and that the web is where things are expected to be delivered quickly (and dirty … but we can fix it later mentality)
Stop acting like you’re the elite. I have no doubt you’re super smart and great at what you do. So be smart all the way and stop criticizing us poor webdevs that have to live with the sad state of affairs. ❤️
rant
webdev js managers elitism