Backend logic? JavaScript. Styles? We do that in JavaScript now. Markup? JavaScript. Anything else? JavaScript.
Historically, different languages suggested different roles. “This language does style.” “This language does structure.” But now it’s “This JavaScript does style.” “This JavaScript does structure.” “This JavaScript does database queries.”
A good ol’ rant from Robin.
HTML and CSS and JavaScript have always been looked down upon by many engineers for their quirks. When they see a confusing and haphazardly implemented API across browsers (HTML/CSS/JS), I see a swarming, writhing, and constantly improving interface that means we can read stuff that was written fifteen years ago and our browsers can still parse it.
Before jumping to conclusions, read the whole thing. Robin isn’t having a go at people who consider themselves full-stack developers; he’s having a go at the people who are only hiring back-end developers and expecting them to automatically be “full stack.”
The technologies you use, the tools you build with, are just that: tools. Learn to use them, and learn to use them well. But always remember that those tools are there to serve you, you are not there to serve your tools.
In the past, when I brushed off new advances or updates to technology and processes I preferred to stick with a simple path of “it still works fine,” but in doing so I realize now that I have l lost a lot beginning with the ability to function with current best practices in certain areas of my skill sets and the degradation a few projects, especially Airbag.
This resonates a lot—we’ve been working on something similar at Clearleft, for very similar reasons:
We rode the folk knowledge train until it became clear that it was totally unscaleable and we struggled to effectively commute know-how to the incoming brains.
At Made By Many, they’ve sliced it into three categories: Design, Technology, and Product Management & Strategy. At Clearleft, we’re trying to create a skills matrix for each of these disciplines: UX, UI, Dev, Research, Content Strategy, and Project Management. I’m working on the Dev matrix. I’ll share it once we’ve hammered it into something presentable. In the meantime, it’s good to see exactly the same drivers are at work at Made By Many:
The levels give people a scaffold onto which they can project their personalised career path, reflecting their progression, and facilitating professional development at every stage.
Mike lists five tool skills he looks for in a designer (not that every designer needs to have all five):
Swap the first one out for some markup and CSS skills, and I reckon you’ve got a pretty good list for developers too.
Following on from her great conversation with Jen on The Web Ahead podcast, Rachel outlines a strategy to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the deluge of tools, frameworks, libraries, and techniques inundating front-end developers every day:
Learn your core skills well. Understand HTML and CSS, be able to build a layout without leaning on a framework. Get a solid understanding of how a website actually gets from the server to a browser, an understanding of security and accessibility. These are the basics, the constants. These things change slowly. These things sit underneath all the complexity and the tooling, the CMSs and the noise of thousands of people all trying to make their mark on this industry.
She also makes this important point:
As you are doing this don’t forget to share what you know.
My interest in rich client-side apps has almost entirely reversed, and now I’m more interested in doing good ol’ server rendering with the occasional side of progressive enhancement, just like we did it in 2004.
This post resonates with me 100%.
Where will I be in 10 years? I don’t know. I hope I still will have some in-demand skills to pay the bills. But it feels like all I see are DevOps and JavaScript, and I know less and less every day about those things.
I can very much relate to what Dan is talking about here. I have no idea what I do any more.
No doubt we’ll always feel we’re behind the curve as there always seems like more to learn. That’s OK. No-one knows it all, but it is hard knowing what people expect of you.
On our way back from New Zealand, Jessica and I stopped off in Sydney for a day. That same evening, the “What Do You Know?” event was going on—a series of five minute lightning talks from Sydney’s finest web geeks.
Maxine asked me if I could do a turn so I put together a quick spiel called Five Things I Learned from the Internet. Those five things are:
At least one of those things will blow your mind. Pwshoo!
A plea for more time.
We tend to think in 2 to 5 year scales, maybe we need to be thinking in longer time lines about our own careers and skills.
June was a busy month.
July is looking a lot calmer. I’m going to be in Brighton for the whole month. I will, however, be using the time to prepare for the onslaught of events in the coming months. In September alone, Brighton will play host to a whole slew of events falling under the banner of the Brighton Digital Festival:
I’m going to be spending my non-travelling time this month preparing a workshop to precede dConstruct. Keep an eye on the site for more details very soon.
Oh, and remember: tickets for dConstruct go on sale this Tuesday, July 5th.
Here are three life skills I have learned from the internet:
You’re welcome.
After spending almost a month on the other side of the Atlantic, it was nice to return to Brighton to find it in the first bloom of Spring. Just a day or two after I returned, I was able to enjoy a nice wander around the Spring Harvest food festival sampling the culinary delights and randomly bumping into fellow geeks like Aral, Steve and Mark.
Such is the scenius of Brighton. There’s always plenty of smart folk around to gather together with, as evidenced by the multitude of geek gatherings like Build Brighton, dotBrighton and UX Brighton. Last night it was the turn of Skillswap, expertly organised by James.
Skillswap hasn’t been about swapping skills for quite a while. Instead it has morphed into a curated evening of related short snappy presentations sometimes followed by an ensemble Q and A. Last night’s theme was Skillswap Seeking Stories and it was a humdinger.
Phil Gyford expounded on his wonderful Pepys’ Diary project and how it has been nurtured over time. Gavin O’Carroll spoke about Spacelog—one of my favourite sites—and the structure of narratives, games and websites. The marvellous Matthew Sheret, who really impressed me at History Hackday, wrapped it up with a demonstration of the power that each of us has to use the internet to tell stories with our data. “You are Time Lords!” he exclaimed, and illustrated his points with some lovely artwork he commissioned from Tom Humberstone.
It was very generous of Phil, Gavin and Matt to give up their time and travel down from London to deliver such a fantastic evening of thought-provoking entertainment. Seriously, it was better than some paid conferences I’ve been to. And—thanks to the sponsorship from Madgex—there was free beer (“free” as in “free beer” …as in “beer!” …as in “free beer!!”).
Anna was working her podcasting magic, recording the talks. You can subscribe to the Skillswap Huffduffer account if you want to hear them once they’re ready.
It’s been a busy week in Brighton. Tantek was in town for a few days, which is always a recipe for enjoyable shenanigans.
The latter half of the week has been a whirlwind of different events. There was a Skillswap on Wednesday and on Thursday, I gave a talk at the Async meet-up, which was quite productive. It gave me a chance to marshall some of my thoughts on responsive enhancement.
The week finished with Layer Tennis. I was honoured—and somewhat intimidated—to be asked to provide the commentary for the Moss vs. Whalen match. Holy crap! Those guys are talented. I mean, I knew that anyway but to see them produce the goods under such a tight deadline was quite something.
Meanwhile, I just blathered some words into a textarea. When it was all done, I read back what I had written and it’s actually not that bad:
It was a somewhat stressful exercise in writing on demand, but it was a fun way to finish up the week.
Now, however, I must pack a bag and fly to San Diego. No rest for the wicked
Recent events reminded me again of what a great place Brighton is for a geek like me. Remy’s all-JavaScript Full Frontal conference went superbly—hence the effusive praise over on the DOM Scripting blog. James and Nat organised a superb Skillswap on the subject of wayfinding. If you missed it, the audio is up on Huffduffer.
It seems like Brighton has a high scenius level.
Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene.
It’s fitting then that, Brian Eno, the man who coined the term “scenius”, will be curating the Brighton Festival next year.
There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason why Brighton should be a geekier place than any other UK town. Sure, we could retroactively discover geographical or social conditions that favour Brighton but I think the truth is that it’s just a large-scale Schelling point.
And it’s not just a geek thing either. The music scene in Brighton is maintaining its reputation, although the scene is somewhat lessened by the recent demise of The Gilded Palace of Sin.
Occasionally, the worlds of geekiness and music mesh to form a glorious venn diagram of fun. The £5 App Musical Christmas Special was one such scenius supercollider. It featured free booze, live music from 100 Robots, and many tales of hackery including a demo of the absolutely wonderful Therething from Toby Cole of Build Brighton, one of the many Brighton geek institutions.
Lest I become too comfortable in my Brighton hive, I’m off to explore another geek scene tomorrow. I’m going over to Belfast to meet the geeks of N’orn Ireland. I’ll be speaking at Refresh Belfast about personal projects in general and the building of Huffduffer in particular. I’m looking forward to it. If you’re in the area, come along and say hello.
The slides from Richard's superb Skillswap presentation.
