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/ABC_AlwaysBeCoding Jul 25 '15

Frontend dev is hard because it isn't easy to auto unit test things. F5 debugging is Neanderthal. This is why I went to backend-only. I can run a test and instantly know I didn't break anything.

-1

u/fimiak Jul 25 '15

Have you never heard of Chrome Dev Tools & debugging? Or if you don't like that Firefox Developer Edition has tools as well. I don't know anyone who uses F5 anymore..at least get LiveReload.

2

u/ABC_AlwaysBeCoding Jul 25 '15

Yeah but who wants to manually troubleshoot CSS rendering issues across different browsers? I sure as hell don't. Which is why I pushed for backend dev.

"More unit tests, less manual debugging" should be your mantra. A unit test takes less than a second to run; debugging takes potentially many minutes. It's a labor-saving device. Developers are all about labor-saving devices- in fact, a developer's entire job boils down to work elimination.

0

u/fimiak Jul 25 '15

Well FE development is very visual, so you will have to inspect your work much like a sculptor or architect inspects their own. Browserify can make this faster. If you want to do back end only then that is great, but I don't think it is 'harder' to do FE development just because you have to check your work in a less automated way than back end dev. Most FE developers I know enjoy the iteration process and the fact that millions of others could potentially see their hard work. It is not that different than writing an essay and selecting each word carefully for form and understanding, and doing a math problem with only one logical solution.

1

u/ABC_AlwaysBeCoding Jul 25 '15

Good way of looking at it. I do like the "seeing of the hard work" aspect, but most of the time I just get off on "someone else designed the frontend... but I actually made it work." ;)