#ActuallyAutistic web dev. Does front of the front-end. Loves perf and minimalism. Prefers HTML, CSS, Web Standards over JS, UX over DX. Hates div disease.
In 2013 we could have maybe 10 mostly small scripts on a major site that did all the necessary UI things, loaded when needed per page basis, controlled manually. Most of the time went into ensuring cross-browser compatibility. Fancier ultra interactive and complex UIs were kinda hard to maintain. It was the end of an era just before React become a thing. We lost Opera Presto, we were freed of IE8.
In 2017 sites were written in full JS with massive bundles which resulted to time spent into researching optimization. Code splitting, tree shaking etc. were becoming a thing. Most of your time went into dealing with all the code now in front-end that you never before had to care about as a front-end dev. But hey, you could make maintainable fancy ultra interactive complex UIs. For mobile phones, with responsive design! And curse that you still had to maintain IE11 compatibility.
In 2021 we got started getting solutions that allow getting the performance of 2013 and small bundles, but now with new modules and tooling. But really there are two major changes: you no longer spend much time at all dealing with cross-browser compatibility, and you are not controlling script loading manually as that can be automated by tooling. Every few months a new great HTML/CSS feature lands that allows you to throw away tons of JS.
Overall, from pure front-end developer perspective, there was a lot of innovation and organic progress, but most of it wasn't really focused into solving things that mattered the most. It was a noisy road. But it is now in the past. I think 2022 is probably the most friendly times ever to become a front-end developer for the web. We have moved away from slowly evolving stagnated browser space to true evergreen browser era, and we have tons of JS solutions to pick the best one for each job (or pick the wrong one and figure it out too late).
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From front-end dev perspective...
In 2013 we could have maybe 10 mostly small scripts on a major site that did all the necessary UI things, loaded when needed per page basis, controlled manually. Most of the time went into ensuring cross-browser compatibility. Fancier ultra interactive and complex UIs were kinda hard to maintain. It was the end of an era just before React become a thing. We lost Opera Presto, we were freed of IE8.
In 2017 sites were written in full JS with massive bundles which resulted to time spent into researching optimization. Code splitting, tree shaking etc. were becoming a thing. Most of your time went into dealing with all the code now in front-end that you never before had to care about as a front-end dev. But hey, you could make maintainable fancy ultra interactive complex UIs. For mobile phones, with responsive design! And curse that you still had to maintain IE11 compatibility.
In 2021 we got started getting solutions that allow getting the performance of 2013 and small bundles, but now with new modules and tooling. But really there are two major changes: you no longer spend much time at all dealing with cross-browser compatibility, and you are not controlling script loading manually as that can be automated by tooling. Every few months a new great HTML/CSS feature lands that allows you to throw away tons of JS.
Overall, from pure front-end developer perspective, there was a lot of innovation and organic progress, but most of it wasn't really focused into solving things that mattered the most. It was a noisy road. But it is now in the past. I think 2022 is probably the most friendly times ever to become a front-end developer for the web. We have moved away from slowly evolving stagnated browser space to true evergreen browser era, and we have tons of JS solutions to pick the best one for each job (or pick the wrong one and figure it out too late).