This post is an excerpt from my 2019 Sunrise Journal (built with Hugo, Imgix, Flickr, and yes, jQuery), which I thought would be interesting to share with the dev community.
I've been a professional web developer for over a decade. But lately there's been a recurring question in my head, "If I don't use React, am I still a developer?"
In one regard, I've never been more confident in my abilities. I can be handed a design and make a functioning site with many of the best practices, tie in API services, and create some advanced functionality.
It all began with my first website in 1996, learning HTML and CSS on Geocities when I just was just 13 years old. Eventually I learned to make dynamic websites, mastered Wordpress, learned MySQL, managed several WHM servers, fell in love with regular expressions and did so while working for on some incredible projects through a couple agencies and have used my knowledge to launch some fun projects.
In another regard, I feel like a complete hack. I've been a casual dev.to reader for a couple years. Now when I read the content, I feel everything is entirely over my head. Being in the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it's difficult to find developers to learn with. I don't relate to a thing I read about the culture of Silicon Valley or the startup scene. Being entirely self-taught I feel basic concepts of programming or development are beyond me. React, ES6, AWS management, node.js, Vue, and package managers are completely beyond me. And worst of all, I still build using jQuery and PHP (it's ok, you can laugh).
This is a field I love, but I feel like an old guy (PHP) in a young guy's game (React).
This leaves me with many questions.
- Just how in the world does one keep up with it all?
- If I don't keep up, will I still be taken seriously as a developer?
- Is there a place in the dev community for those who are marketers first, and developers second?
- Is becoming full stack out of the question?
- And alas, if I don't use React, am I still a developer?
Latest comments (88)
I have recently written about developers jumping on the React bandwagon without having a sold grasp of the basics. Don't start with React
I believe there is nothing wrong with choosing to stay away from React and its peers. Not every website need to be a Single Page Application. There are valid uses cases for 'older' stacks.
Great article Maroun. This totally needed to be addressed. Thank you!
Thank you Tanner!
MithrilJS is a example you're still a full-stack developer without the need of React/Angular/Bootstrap.
You keep up with passion and dedication. And discipline. Also knowing your limits and focus on small steps. Take one hour every day to program outside your comfort zone. And don't try to learn everything at once.
Any decent human would take you seriously no matter your skill level. If you lack knowledge, the aforementioned human should be glad to help you out :)
Yes. We all need each other. And does it matter where your dev priority is? You are still a dev!
Fullstack is never necessary, but some developers including myself became one with more and more responsibilities and a need for more control around the stack we are working with. But no, there is not a need for becoming full-stack.
Learn a really good backend language instead. Python, Ruby, Elixir, Go are a few examples that comes to mind. If you become confident in your programming skills, you will pick stuff like React real quick. Also, Javascript frameworks are overrated and hyped beyond oblivion.
I haven't even looked at Vue 3 yet. Part of my Netflix Apathy Syndrome. :D I'm hoping to get some stuff done this weekend.
Indeed. I don't know React much (I've finally settled on Vue.js for a personal project, but have yet to really get started, because Netflix), but I've seen some good React code. Don't blame the tool because some are not using properly.
If you're already not learning these things I can assume you're not interested in the engineering side of JavaScript and you might be more interested in either PHP backends or CSS. Find your passion, align it with marketable skills and learn new things about it. You don't need to feel bad about your situation since with your experience, moving forward would be quite fast.
Writing my first webapp that I felt was good enough for public use was a beast. AngularJS is annoyingly over-complicated, IMHO.
Refactoring the entire thing and getting rid of AngularJS for the sake of speed (and simplicity in updating) was an even bigger beast to deal with, though calling the refactoring 'absolutely worth it' is an absolute understatement. It's less total code, and I know what ALL of it does and how.
and that's why I still stick with Angular regardless of the challenges I face
Another possible question might be, when something new replaces React, will everyone who has used React still be developers? Hopefully, your answer put the feelings of inadequacy into perspective.
If you feel "outdated" imagine how I felt when I did the jump in my professional career from C/C++ to React. My brain almost exploded.
My story is a bit funny as I started reading javascript.info to learn Javascript (I didn't even know that the language had changed from the times of jQuery), as well as the official React docs and Redyx videos in egghead.io. I did this while rocking my newborn son to entertain myself on our long sleepless nights.
Fast forward a few years later and I'm really loving React. I would say that no matter when you finally decide to learn new tech, if you ever need to, is that you will find yourself at a huge advantage of understanding CS terms in a very solid manner, as opposed to many devs who just learn what they need to learn in front-end.
As an example, our React application is growing and many developers seem to have a hard time visualizing what data structure is best suited and more performant for what, while if you have a solid BE background, this is an everyday life question.
Same with network requests. A network request is delayed, some race condition happens, etc. You would probably know right away where the issue is as opposed to someone with less experience in Backend.
Cheers and good luck!
As long as you get paid for it, you are a "professional" software developer. The rest is not relevant.
People often forget: The main raison d'Γͺtre for professional software developers is to solve customer problems. As long as you accomplish that, I see no reason to worry.
I remember back in the day in 2011, I had to develop a frontend for a warehouse management software. It was mainly done in jQuery, Bootstrap and the one or other jQuery-plugin. I came to a problem within the software, where the UI had several dynamic updates - and worse: some were interdependent (X has to be there in order to determine which Y has to be loaded). That demanded a completely different (event driven) approach. So I was looking for a relief to my pain. That was backbone at the time.
That said: As long as you do not feel the urge to use different technology - why switch?
Our industry has become something like the fashion industry where people are publicly shamed if they fall out of trend. I see myself more like a good plumber who delivers a reasonable result within the constraints of time, money and tools.
Honestly, my advice would be - don't feel intimidated. If you can code in PHP, you can understand React and it really can't be lost. It worth it to go out of your comfort zone sometime.
On the other hand, there is a whole momentum saying that using React and Angular for everything is over-engineering. I seriously thing PHP is on the descending side, but hey, there are still tons and tons of PHP engine out there and they will probably needs maintenance for the next few decades. Moreover, I think young developer will stop learning it as the web evolve, which will leave plenty of room for PHP developers.
nothing wrong with using jQuery and PHP..., I love plain javascript.
I'll simply answer it with a big fat YES!
First, coolest username ever. Second, many of us are self-taught, myself included. I am still a student, not yet a developer. You are way ahead of me and I don't want this to sound like I know stuff, because I don't. I have not yet worked as a developer. That being said, this is a great time to add some skills to your portfolio. There are a lot of low-cost courses out there that are pretty good. Whenever I talk to software developers (there are a few gaming companies here in Raleigh), they tell me that they are always looking for developers, that there aren't enough, and here's where I should go to learn, which is how I got the idea that maybe I should take a class. I signed up for a boot camp on Udemy and haven't regretted it. I think I paid $12? Mine covers HTML5, CSS, Bootstrap 3&4, JavaScript, JQuery, and NodeJS. React isn't covered but I'll probably take a separate course for it. So really, you are a developer who has lots of skills to choose from to add to his resume. Good luck!
Oh good. I get to be the first to mention Elm. Recommend you skip all this JS framework stuff and go straight to the gold. I do use jQuery and JS for an existing client and have used Angular and React in the past. However to me Elm just makes so much more sense as the future of front end.
I couldn't agree more.
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