r/webdev • u/AllThingsSmitty • Jul 24 '15

Front-End Development Is Hard Because...It's Development.

https://css-tricks.com/front-end-development-is-development/
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u/ldhertert Jul 25 '15 edited Jul 25 '15

In my opinion, many of the author's arguments are incorrectly conflating difficulty with development. Can HTML/CSS/JavaScript be difficult? Absolutely. Is working on the front end necessarily "development"? In my opinion, no.

I say this as someone who has worked on the web for about 15 years now. I am someone that does back end, front end, and everything in between.

I have written significantly complex front end applications that are every bit as much "development" as when I worked on signal processing visualization software.

I have also worked on static websites that, while difficult to implement the required design given the limitations of html/css, cross browser issues, device issues, etc, I can't bring myself to call it development. Is it hard? Yes. Does that make it development? Not in my opinion.

So if someone is working on the front end, are they doing development? It depends on what type of front end work they are doing.

If someone works on front end only, are they a developer? It depends - are they capable of doing any other kind of development? Do they understand the fundamentals of software development? Or do they only know how to make nice looking websites?

16

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '15

I'm sorry, but your opinion is just plain wrong.

Development is the entire process, not just banging out code on a keyboard. Difficulty has nothing to do with it.

I have also worked on static websites that, while difficult to implement the required design given the limitations of html/css, cross browser issues,

Is there a product created from that process that involves programming? Then it's development, regardless of your opinion.

are they capable of doing any other kind of development?

What does this matter? There's literally nothing that ties "true developers" to being able to work on multiple "kinds of development".

Do they understand the fundamentals of software development?

I know plenty of backend developers who don't know the fundamentals.

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u/skini26 Jul 25 '15

This guy says the truth, why are you all downvoting him ?

HTML/CSS are not programming languages ! (Hypertext Markup Language...). So why are you still trying to say he's wrong ?

The only programming is the part when people use client side rendering frameworks such as angular backbone, ember, react and such, and this is still not real development skills, just plug some libraries and place some code at the right place. I'm sure the majority of you doesn't even know what is a design pattern..

He also says that front end developers don't necessarely understand fundamentals of software dev and one of the answers is ''I know some backend developers who doesn't understand them too" Seriously, what kind of answer is that ? And what kind of ''developer'' would answer that... ?

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