I am Happy Not To Be A Web Developer Anymore

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Become a backend engineer. Its my favorite site

This is also the best way to support me is to support yourself becoming a better backend engineer.

By: Andrew Wulf

MY MAIN YT CHANNEL: Has well edited engineering videos

Discord

Hey I am sponsored by Turso, an edge database. I think they are pretty neet. Give them a try for free and if you want you can get a decent amount off (the free tier is the best (better than planetscale or any other))

[lylyscuir]

4:21 I think the "Lindy effect" is really powerful in this regard. Paradoxically, it's often the oldest stuff that is worth learning, that will stick around for longer than whatever brand new shiny thing has appeared at the cutting edge. If it's an old book and people are still talking about it, it's probably worth reading. It's not likely that someone is going to come along and completely shatter our foundational understanding of philosophy and mathematics. Not impossible, just unlikely.

[everalert]

1:13 I actually did take a long ass break from webdev a little after jQuery got popular, and coming home to see paint everywhere is a totally accurate description of what it felt like to find out about shit like Node and React.

[markmacw]

Mullen is a legend. No exaggeration at all. It took decades for freestyle like what he helped pioneer really start to be accepted back into the mainstream of skating many years after the whole X games phenomena.

[pravinkool]

Building the first 80% from scratch, thats the really enjoyable part. Over the years, I've carefully positioned myself in my company to get in on a new project, build it up to almost maturity and then move on to the next interesting project. Working too much on the last 20% will lead to burnout, or at least that's what it feels like to me.

[csIn]

13:45 I worked on a project for 4.5 years and rewrote it twice in that time, about 3 months each. The DB greatly changed in the first rewrite and was sharded in the second. Huge changes, other than the Excel library (Ignite UI) we used. Write your code like you intend to rewrite it every few years. I've lived by that since I first heard it and it works so well with the evolution of frameworks and architectural decisions.

[dezly-macauley]

I made the decision to just switch to Rust and C++ for this very reason.

Yes those languages are hard but there's a sense of completion.

Also I couldn't care less about React or Next.js (It feels taboo to say that out loud)

[emileriksen]

Thank you for the awesome content. I am currently going through your course on frontend master (y)

[whaisonw]

3:40 We also have a lot of applications that are stuck on older package versions. Every time time a vulnerability gets discovered, we need to upgrade all applications, as it should be. But often enough the fix was applied in some next major version. Support for other than the latest version is often very poor, forcing you to upgrade. And since it is a major version upgrade, the solution is often non trivial. To keep up we need to have one persion that does nothing but constantly upgrading the applications we're responsible for.

This is definitively a major downside of a micro-service/frontend architecture

[tinrab]

I actually think WASM has the potential to improve webdev a lot. It makes the web what it should be from the start, a compilation target. Having to ship the source directly is a big deal and part of the reason why the web is a mess.

[janinec]

I started my first web page in 1999 and I'm still a developer... got made redundant last month, not due to performance but company financial position. Keep in mind, I specialised which was good for awhile until now. Have applied for at least 30 jobs, received 1 interview and didn't get it. Completely deflating - considering taking a break and deciding between moving back to full-stack, starting a business, or becoming a youtube influencer.

[RealDevastatia]

I know how he feels. Working on my personal site is a lot more fun than working for a corporation. My current site is my second attempt at an SPA, and the first that doesn't break the Back and Forward buttons. I write all of my code from scratch with no frameworks, borrowing snippets from Stack Overflow as needed.

[greatwolf.]

7:48 I actually quite like Borland back in the day. It's what I used for my AP CS101 back in high school. I thought their C/C++ compiler was really fast. It compiled the same source with full optimizations on faster than mingw gcc with -O0 opts disabled which I thought was impressive..

[cmdv-tv]

Can't believe there was no mention of Rodney vs Daewon, peak picnic table usage!!

[Gorillaeatz]

Bro, you are the coolest technician ever. To write a senior capstone project on Rodney Mullen, that’s gnarly AF. I transitioned from skateboard to Web Developer at the graduating college. I know what you mean by pivoting

[theoutlet]

Next time I fck up, I am just gonna say "I have a mind of an artist"

[jl_]

The best skill in web development: Focusing on your foundation first and ignoring the hype of the new tools. Frameworks are great but only after your foundation is strong.

[andrewnleon]

I use to have that mindset of everything should be webforms or csharp but i realized I need to add more experience to my workforce. React has become my heart of choice but i can easily adapt to csharp code to support my backend needs.

[johnsmithsbedroom]

The guy who wrote this article definitely made a lot of good points, but the sentence "I don't use many open-source packages beyond Swift math libraries, and most of the code I write is not something you would find anywhere" makes this guy a walking red flag on any team. Tbh it partially ruined the article for me. I don't want to work with someone who is so sure of themselves that they'll never use open source libs that aren't their own creation. This guy's condescension is off the charts.

[judgewest]

There's a lot of hubris in this article - but the lesson for all when doing something - pick the stack that has stood the test of time with the least moving parts, not the latest whizzbang.
After all, they're just a bunch of if's and loops anyway, let's not kid ourselves.

[wywarren]

Taking a 10 year break from JS and coming back to it is like coming back from the Thanos blip. The part who they were is still there but how they operate and their relationships are all different now.