![]() If you ask 10 developers, you will probably get 10 different answers. As my colleague Kristian mentioned in this blog post, this is a very personal choice - there is no single solution for everyone. It will be hard to get any quality work done without this set of tools! Text Editorįinding the perfect text editor is no easy task. Geez, even CSS is capable of reading a user’s OS settings so that we can design based on user preferences without any dependencies.This is what I like to call the 4 pillars of web development. Rather, it’s all front-end code doing front-end-y things on the client side. What that means is that there is a world where there is no “back” end in the traditional sense. It’s the era of the all-powerful front-end developer. That’s how I’m sure folks feel today when spinning up a React app, pushing it over to GitHub, which triggers automated tests on the code, then deploys the code to a Jamstack server that loads the site in a split second. I felt like I had back-end prowess without the back-end gibberish. That was an empowering thing for a front-end developer like me. I seriously don’t mind the command line these days.)īut, build processes! Wow. I already had a license and didn’t want to mess with any more command line crap. ![]() Then I went and bought a CodeKit license. I’m guessing it took me four hours to grok that stuff and come up with a light build process that watched and compiled my Sass. I was mostly a jQuery jockey in 2013 when I read Chris’s “Grunt for People Who Think Things Like Grunt are Weird and Hard” on 24 Ways. I think it all started with Grunt for me. ![]() It’s been exciting to watch, even if it causes me to question my abilities as a “developer.” The way JavaScript has exploded in recent years has had a ripple effect on everyone. You dun got big in the last 10 years, haven’t you? Been hitting the gym lately? The blurred distinction between the front end and the back end I understand it’s frustrating, but it’s sorta what we signed up for when we decided to work in the Wild West of the Web. That means the way we work will continue to change, the nature of work will continue to change, and the job titles that people assign us will continue to change. I’m not advocating we go back in time or anything it’s just proof in the pudding that times have changed and the web will continue to evolve. Some of those were just as important then as they are today, but we definitely weren’t fretting about page speed, unit testing, or which framework to use. There are plenty of other niche areas of specialization these days and people who care deeply about them:ĭid my buddy and I care about these things back in 2009? Heck no. I wouldn’t expect anyone to know as much as Robin does about fonts, no matter how good they are writing code.Īnd that’s just type. My buddy Robin makes it look so easy, but I know he puts a lot of effort in how he chooses and implements fonts. These days, yes, web fonts are not only a thing, but arguably a profession unto themselves. We cared about a lot of things, mostly newer CSS3 properties that allowed us to ditch PNG images for real rounded borders, add box and text shadows to all the things, and do fun little things like animated image sprites. Google Fonts didn’t even launch until 2010, to give you an idea of the time. ![]() Like, web typography just wasn’t a big deal back then. We spent several minutes reminiscing about the decisions we made back then. I was just talking with a friend this morning about a project we worked on some years ago, like 2009. What I can do is sum up what I think are the buckets of angst driving the conversation. There’s clearly no standard, whether you’re a front-end developer, a back-end developer, a bank teller, or stuck in middle management. They’re often the by-product of how an organization is structured, how a particular team is resourced, pay scale, politics, egos, or whatever the heck else you can think of. Job titles are hard regardless of the industry you’re in. I’m not here to add any clarity to the situation. ( Note to self: publish more stuff on job titles and cash in on the web traffic!) Anytime we post about it on CSS-Tricks, it never fails to strike a nerve and result in a flurry of comments. I mean, crap, I’ve written my own fair share of posts on the topic. Next to writing code, front-end developers (myself included) seem to focus a lot on job titles.
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