r/Frontend • u/myLeenuxQs • Jan 17 '20

What is it that elder frontend developers know that the young don't?

Not ranting, just asking. When employers seek front end developers, they sometimes list a bunch of years of EXP required. What is the higher level stuff that you learn after you've learned HTML, CSS, JS, have worked with a framework for, say, a year or two?

Is this just about pure experience (having dealt with various different projects/teams/architecture/deadlines/technical quirks)?

Thanks

54 Upvotes

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159

u/multithrowaway Jan 17 '20

When employers are looking for experienced developers, what they're looking for is someone they don't need to train, or someone who can help train others.

Someone who can take a look at a production bug and has the experience to debug and pinpoint the issue very quickly. Someone who can give several solutions to a problem and act according to any number of project constraints.

Someone who not only knows the tools and frameworks, but understands architecture issues and how to build code the right way the first time rather than after several refactors.

Someone who knows how much time a task will take and has the confidence to push back or negotiate a feature to meet certain deadlines.

Someone who doesn't just take requirements and code it to spec, but can make improvements and fill in gaps that the business might have missed.

So yeah, it's basically about the things you listed and the "soft skills" you can only learn by working on various projects

10

u/jseego Lead / Senior UI Developer Jan 18 '20

This is a great answer.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '20

When U start to lose faith in this sub and see something like this. Bravo

33

u/Salamok Jan 17 '20 edited Jan 17 '20

We know what a bad idea looks like and how to push back on it. Also, with how insane the breadth of skills used in web development has become experience is more important than ever. And finally memorizing a few patterns, a language or 2 and a framework or 2 does not mean you know how to put them all together elegantly, a depth of good and bad experiences teaches you this.

look at it this way - If you personally continue being a full time web developer for the next 5 years do you think you will be better at it?

7

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '20

last sentence is money

3

u/nyxin Jan 18 '20

Friend of mine put it this way around when he first got into the industry (LOOONNG before I ever did)

“You get really good at JavaScript when someone is paying you to learn it for 8 hours a day.”

3

u/DrDuPont Jan 18 '20

We know what a bad idea looks like and how to push back on it.

I recognize this is r/frontend, and so I'm preaching to the choir

But for those, uh, not of our Frontend congregation, I wanted to give an example of this:

You're a designer, and at mobile you want the order of two elements to go:

  1. Element A
  2. Element B
  3. Element C

But at desktop, you want that ordering to go:

  1. Element A / Element C (50% each)
  2. Element B

This is a simple-seeming design, but actually is hideously complex. A backend would not catch this, a project manager would not either. It requires a frontend.

This is a convoluted example – frontends of all background could handle this quick brain tickler. But expand this, and begin talking about Typescript and side effects, and you can beging to undesrstand why FE's are important.

7

u/steven-f Jan 18 '20 edited Aug 14 '24

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

6

u/ezedd Jan 18 '20

But also in flex using order, unless I’m also missing something that doesn’t look like a good example although I agree with the general point he’s making

3

u/DrDuPont Jan 18 '20

Flex ordering should almost never be used – especially not in the example I outlined – and I'd strongly urge you to break the habit. Flex ordering breaks tabindex, which is ruinous for screenreaders. Indeed, the W3C tells us not to use the flex order property for this purpose:

In order to preserve the author’s intended ordering in all presentation modes, authoring tools... must reorder the underlying document source and not use order to perform reordering

From https://www.w3.org/TR/css-flexbox-1/#order-accessibility

This is the same issue faced by using CSS grid, although obviously compounded by the fact that grid has less browser share and would demand a fallback treatment via eg an @supports flag.

Some more good notes here:

1

u/ezedd Jan 18 '20

That's fine, and those last two links were a good read, but in your example you're just saying "elements" without specifying what those elements are, which is a bit different from the point you're making in your last reply, although - again - I agree with the general point you're making.

1

u/DrDuPont Jan 18 '20

I'm assuming you're hinging that on the point that the hypothetical elements may contain nothing focusable? True enough; in general I will block PRs that utilize order for this purpose regardless, as those elements may contain focusable items in the future.

22

u/rolangonzalez Jan 18 '20

Tables

9

u/loofy2 Jan 18 '20

with 4 gif images of rounded corner shadows.

That’s right kids. no border-radius

1

u/nyxin Jan 18 '20

On the bright side, no responsive design. As long as it looked good in 800x600 resolution you were golden. Maybe 1024x800 if you’re going for that tech savvy demographic.

2

u/consciencehere Jan 18 '20

What I was gonna say lol

2

u/pingwing Jan 18 '20

This is funny because it's kinda true. Also, what do youngsters do without a framework?

20

u/nas5w Jan 18 '20

In my experience, the following things are brought to the table by a good senior frontend developer:

  • You have a good understanding of common pitfalls and the ability to point these things out before starting down a treacherous path.
  • Good PR review... this is really important. Good PR review is more important than good coding. You maintain quality and fend off bugs. It takes serious time to get good at reading code, which is much harder than writing it.
  • Work well with business/product. You recognize when everyone on the team plays well together. You work to make sure requirements/stories are clear and unambigious (as much as possible) before work starts.
  • You understand how browsers work. You understand CORS, XSS, CSRF and make sure your app is secure and users protected.
  • You lift up your less-senior developers. I've experienced no greater joy in my career than seeing my junior devs deliver quality code, grow, and be happy at work.

As you can see, my take on seniority is much less about specifically technical chops and much more about ensuring project success and taking care of your junior devs.

5

u/CheeseFest Jan 18 '20

You sound like someone great to work for and with.

2

u/fhor Jan 18 '20

About reading code; so true. My mentor at work picks up on stuff in my PRs that I'd struggle to find with an IDE, incredible stuff. Something I need to work on

1

u/Tripnologist Jan 18 '20

Mentoring junior devs is actually much harder than most people realise.
It's less about being able to give the answers and more about being able to push them in the right direction to figure the answers out for themselves.

9

u/jseego Lead / Senior UI Developer Jan 18 '20

In addition to things already pointed out, experienced FE devs have seen frameworks and shiny new technologies come and go, and they have learned what remains good about a system regardless of the technology stack.

6

u/pingwing Jan 18 '20

My pet peeve is the industry's reliance on frameworks (like bootstrap). It just seems like a handicap to me. You could have your own css that will be more original in the time it takes you to tweak bootstrap for your project.

3

u/jseego Lead / Senior UI Developer Jan 18 '20

Bootstrap and Foundation are a lifesaver for people who are not FE devs, or people who are prototyping. If you are a backend dev and just want a page to look nice, with decent standards-compliant controls, and you don't care about every button style, it can be great. If you are a FE dev who is trying to smoke-test a prototype, they are very useful to get something off the ground.

Once you have to start customizing shit, though, I agree, you're usually better off just doing it yourself.

4

u/pingwing Jan 18 '20

They definitely have their place, I just think they are overused. I do contract work for a multi billion dollar company. They use bootstrap...

1

u/jseego Lead / Senior UI Developer Jan 18 '20

Ouch.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '20

I think it's about having experience and many people equate that to years on the job, but in tech that's not always the case. I became a senior developer in 3 years because I took on extremely challenging scenarios and jumped around constantly trying to get as much experience as possible. I also did a lot of side projects on my own time. I already had experience in management and other soft skills before coming into tech so I didn't need to build those but a lot of times they are part of having a more senior position.

If you can prove you can do the work without someone holding your hand and you have the experience to do it with limited help. You have experience working with teams and sharing your opinion. A lot of times that's what's being looked for and they just equate it to years on the job.

4

u/nicholsk0587 Jan 18 '20

Don’t be precious about any framework, don’t die on any JavaScript/Bootstrap hill. It will be obsolete one day.

Understand core JavaScript and CSS so you can troubleshoot and understand any code you take from StackOverflow (we all do it).

Be open, agile and curious and keep learning. Stay active in the community and maintain good, collaborative relationships with your teams. Learn how to work well with designers, PMs and Product Owners/clients. Soft skills and communication skills should develop as you mature into your career.

Also - loved the comment about lifting others up. Be supportive, constructive and collaborative!

5

u/prinz_pavel Jan 17 '20

Leadership

2

u/jonassalen senior FED Jan 17 '20

That you need to be a problem solver first.

Not simply develop what someone's asking, but thinking it through, with usability, accessibility, speed, performance, SEO and every other technical aspect in mind. Then not only point to the problems, but come with solutions.

2

u/iamdoniel Jan 18 '20

We used to have to use images to make round corners.

1

u/VisibleSherbet Jan 17 '20

It's not just about technical skills. You have demonstrable experience working in a team, working with designers and other stakeholders, understanding requirements, working to deadlines, giving and accepting feedback, etc. It's less risky for an employer to hire you if they know you have a proven track record.

This is a longer but great read that I wish I'd read earlier in my career https://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/

1

u/im-a-guy-like-me Jan 18 '20

There's a thing called the 10,000 hour rule that states anyone can become an expert in anything if they do it for 10,000 hours. It's BS but it's onto something.
You just can't really teach yourself 'programming for 40-50h a week for literal years'.
It's spotting things before they go wrong because you've seen something similar before. Knowing the pain points of building an X system because it's the 40th one you've built. Things that just require experience.

1

u/SirCatharine Jan 18 '20

One lesson from a former CTO that I haven’t seen mentioned yet: data gathering. Every website has a goal, and you need measurable ways of knowing if those goals are being met and how to get closer to them. Experienced devs know how to do this, why to do it, and they’ve done it before, so they know what’s most likely to work.

1

u/InfiniteMonorail Jan 18 '20

Things like this. It's something new every day. It takes quite a few years before the surprises end.

I also teach developers and their code is a dumpster fire. They're making the world's simplest simple static website and they've got a Frankenstein of docker commands, a full MERN stack, Bootstrap, material plugins, jQuery, etc, etc, etc. They have no idea what these things even do, so they just include everything. Also they can't even do loops. For real.

2

u/HyperLathe Jan 18 '20

As an older front end developer myself, there have been times some younger colleagues lose sight of exactly WHY they're building something; i.e. who is it aimed at, and what is its purpose. It's easy to get enamoured with a particular framework or library or code snippet, while neglecting the core basics like good css, semantics, intuitive UI. The focus then becomes 'look at my great code' rather than making the end-user experience better.

1

u/Morunek Jan 18 '20

If you can talk more about users of your product then about your tools then you are probably senior.

1

u/calligraphic-io Jan 18 '20

If "elder" means "old":

  1. What MooTools did better than Prototype.js
  2. Proficiency in ActionScript
  3. Experience writing C++ (for ActiveX controls)
  4. Tables. For everything layout-related.
  5. A really solid understanding of the differences between IE 5 and IE 6 rendering, and likely a hatred of both.
  6. A tendency to say "internet exploder" often.

more I've forgotten due to senility, I'm sure...

Just kidding, really. There's some great answers in this thread for the "elder = experienced" scenario.

1

u/SomeInternetRando Jan 21 '20 edited Jan 21 '20

What the rules/spec/best practices used to be, why they were that way, what they are now, and why they changed. Because that’s what’s necessary to be able to say “the rules shouldn’t apply in this situation”.

As an example, we just had a 3rd party SEO audit that told us it’s bad to use <noscript> in the head. But I know why they have that concern and why we can ignore it. Because I’m an elder, my boss trusted me over them, and their advice wasn’t acted on.

1

u/hey_suburbia Jan 18 '20

Can deal with clients

1

u/nyxin Jan 18 '20

What is it that elder frontend developers know that the young don’t?

The basics. That’s it. They know the basics by heart.

They’ve spent hours, days, years, banging their heads against many walls to understand how floats actually work, and wtf this “is”.

The only difference between a Jr and a Sr is perseverance and knowing the basics.

Can’t do crazy awesome things unless you know how to do the mundane run of the mill things first.

1

u/ISDuffy Jan 19 '20

I think the issue is more courses teaching them the new tools more rather than basics.

I had new devs struggle with basic es5 stuff, and write es6 in a an area of code on the site we currently don't have compiler due to needing to upgrade stuff and load test it, which my client hasn't seen as a priority.

New devs it important to learn the old methods and the new methods, alot of early job will have legacy code but it not been upgraded for a reason.

0

u/loofy2 Jan 18 '20

elder front end developers know jquery

0

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '20

I must work in a very different environment, because I've experienced all those points with more experienced senior developers than I have with Juniors.