HN user
People have a lot of opinions of javascript because it really is the Statue of Liberty. You really can know a subset of Algol and have portable apps in the browser asap.
Well gosh darnit, then everyone and their mother is going to come to America
It's an age old envy.
Okay? I'm having a lot of fun talking about some of the parts of our circus. I can't change anything. There will be new cult leaders (evangelists) for frameworks, and new cohorts, we can't change the past. Just pay attention to the rough framework (no pun intended, swear) as it happens again, and try our best to call it out, because it didn't always lead to great outcomes.
Money will be made on all sides regardless and we will all be fine financially. I'm talking about something else, inner. The infinite anus, asshole, is real - but now I'm just projecting.
It’s a nuanced topic. If we want to dive in, I can provide a glimpse into the first layer of the anus as we stick our head into it.
When we shepherded a lot of sheep into frontend via these courses and boot camps and quasi courses/bootcamps in the form of certain frameworks (hey, you only know this one framework?), we created a cohort of something.
Now what is that something? It’s not really the tinkerer that loves doing this stuff and would have found a way to express themselves (please pay attention to the word “express”, as in, can’t help it). That something was … a pragmatic identity. A pragmatic identity was formed where “I am now a software engineer because I and my cohort agree, we really know how to do our stuff”.
Such a cohort can only be fueled by identity, not passion. This cohort can’t innovate and must cling to the identity of their original accreditation, so they will always be defensive.
That’s the first layer of the asshole as we enter it, it goes deeper. The second layer involves large amounts of money and people’s livelihoods, to which they’d defend unto death.
I push back on stuff like this so developers who feel the feet on their throat from this culture can have some confidence to nudge the boot off.
There goes my hero: https://youtu.be/EqWRaAF6_WY
I called out a grifter.
No personal vendetta. We sit here and punch the mysterious air as to why things are the way they are. I thought maybe we'd punch up at something that is plausibly a culprit. I'll admit it may be punching down, since this is just one dude. But then again, it's one dude who influenced a lot of people ...
We can't just keep sitting here and blaming developers for being
1) New
2) Dumb
3) FOMO
4) Dumb
5) Unqualified
You understand? It's worth looking at what content they are consuming and where the mindshare is being promoted from. It's worth asking who is selling them the idea of these frameworks.
I totally get your point. I'll just give you a little color about where I'm coming from. Most products don't need a team of over five frontend/backend devs (so imagine a team of 10 people). Most teams have been over staffed. When you are overstaffed, that's when everyone needs to be cookie cutter with cookie cutter expectations (e.g backend should do ui, frontend should backend). On non-overstaffed teams, the core group compliments each other very well and brings extreme expertise. No one on such a team ever goes "I can do what that guy does", because it's not a run of the mill mass market team.
I think in the age of AI we'll see more concentrated teams since everyone can hit up AI and do anything. It's going to be very important to build tight teams, and I don't think it's going to happen by continuing our factory farm level recruitment.
We need a Behind the Javascript VH1 show.
The thing is brilliant UI engineers will stun you with incredible UI. It's almost like not investing in AI, you will get blind sided by products that just look and feel better. Your backend engineers are never going to cut it. This is true for backend engineers too, if you try half ass it with "full stack" devs, brilliant backend devs will stun you with things and your products will be inferior.
For example, we all got stunned by the machine learning people. We have to pay attention to everyone.
Imagine someone made Deno with a corresponding course to go along with it. I would consider that a grift.
https://frontendmasters.com/courses/remix/
That was the end goal for this whole thing. I do look at the pricing page (what are you trying to sell constantly?) on anything people put up on the internet and judge from there. You can have the last word and put in a testimonial for Remix, since I won't be budging on this. It's a rabbit hole for both you and me to keep going at this, as I've seen enough of this pattern. Consider me a neural net on this front (end).
I think that adds to my point. How does that have so many stars on github? The customers "star" it. Who uses this on a real app? It's alright to slowly accept the bitter truth that grifting scales.
You should ignore all of it. They mostly sell the idea of a developer to you, the same with any marketing. That's what an influencer does, they make you feel good about buying a cheap identity.
Here's one:
These grifters sell entire courses on the product, that's their game. So when you find an unmaintained Remix app at your company, well, the grifters got the ears of your junior devs :(
And they just promote it and promote it:
https://kentcdodds.com/blog/a-review-of-my-time-at-remix
https://kentcdodds.com/blog/why-i-love-remix
https://kentcdodds.com/courses
Pure grift. But since most people are decent people they don't know and fall for it, and something like this influencer emerges. They have entire Discords of customers, the same as crypto scams.
Edit: I don't know why people would downvote calling out a notable grifter in a thread that extended out to a discussion about influencers. WHICH influencers? Are we scared of that topic? The climate of the JS ecosystem didn't happen accidently.
People fall victim to this shit right here on HN, and then write blog posts about what the fuck is wrong with frontend:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39453767
(This entire thread reads like deliberate testimonials.)
Stop buying this stuff.
Obama just made a random decision to make a China pivot. We had a large force in the Middle East and instead of just bringing them home, we created this weird apparatus to shift the strategy over to China. This is similar to if your company decided to introduce Agile. That extension of your company will never go away, and will have ideas.
The idea that “someone is stealing our technology” is just an idea, similar to “developers don’t give good estimates or timelines”. An idea that will feel like the right idea to all, and will be copied. Copy cat culture exists in war too (why are you fighting them? Because they are fighting me).
This is a contrived problem, and demagogues like Trump seized on it. Was it all Obama’s fault? Not quite. Bush had already created a war apparatus in the 2000s, and there was no turning it off, just turning it around and pointing it somewhere else.
——
We are the storytellers of this history, we lived it. We are the primary sources, don’t doubt your ability to document this history. AI was never imagined in the halls of Research to create a never ending forever digital war.
I’ll paraphrase Jensen Huang regarding China:
You can’t keep a country behind
The only hope we have is that Trump is a true circus ring master. He cancels the previous admin things and reinstates them with his name and a republican spin.
I know, people felt like eggs were too expensive and brown people were getting too much of a free ride so they voted to burn the country down.
The grand summary of America 2025. I don't think anyone has said it better than that in all of media. They gymnastics people run to avoid that simple truth just reveals their rotten core.
NIH funds a lot of studies that provides data against their political policies.
Yes, we need a blowout midterms. I said this in another comment, and I'll paraphrase again. The Left does not need to win back a single Republican voter. We just need to clearly show their face, and I believe this will be enough to rally them to a blowout in 2025. When you see the rotten greedy values of the Right, it will immediately activate the larger Left demographic (which will dwarf anything you've ever seen). Many closet-maga came out of the woodwork just in this thread alone, with zero shame. So necessary to just see.
We don't need to dismantle democracy. That's their game.
No. Lines being drawn is fine. It's fine to see the faces painted exactly as they are. The Left actually doesn't need to win back any voter from the Right. They just need to passionately show the faces of those on the Right, and the larger demographic of the Left will emerge.
When you see the corruption allowing, greedy tax obsessed Republican, when you see their true face, it's the greatest rallying call for a blowout midterms.
Just cut the tall grass to see the critters in the field.
Can you boil down the Inquisition into one word? I'm confused, so you found an example that works for you and then like, our examples are not workable I guess? I'm very open to you being brilliant with an incredible thesis at hand, but like, seriously give me your thesis - what the are you talking about?
if there are only two sides then it's too easy to be a Trump supporter.
I'll concede that, that's a great point. However, the key to maintaining a balanced diet is first you must get to a target weight you would like to balance from. You can't just be 300lbs and begin eating a balanced diet. There is no time to sit here and argue about anything you mentioned. We are simply in crisis and this involves wiping the slate clean of the mindshare that is sitting right before us. We can discuss our old hatreds afterwards, which pale in comparison. Basically, we need to restart the game from the last save point, as much is it sucks. We can't take the balanced diet of all sides bad because we're extremely obese at the moment.
Some disagree, to which I generally just leave a Fuck You.
No, I know how awful my comments are so I expect them to be flagged and downvoted (not really awful, I just can't help but say fuck you to the other side in the current climate). It's better to look at my submissions.
Here's a simple one that was just flagged recently:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43405402
So if it's not Dang that's doing this, then there is a MAGA contingent here as far as I'm concerned. Some of you don't have the appropriate level of vigor quite frankly and might need more of those T boost shots Rogan tells yall to always get.
Dude, okay, so let's enter your Pokemon gym:
Your rules:
1) I cannot use my sensibility to look at the last 200 years (huh? okay.)
2) I need to now make sense of geopolitical beef between England and France around 1300.
3) Then I need to tie this all back to how this all leads to not be being able to determine, morally, what's going on today.
Are these the rules to becoming the pokemon master in your gym? I'll continue if I have all the rules down. I'm excited to attend your world class mental gym and get the greatest of all mental gymnastics training.
Like what? Do you mean like should we or shouldn't we enslave people to build the Pyramids? Is that what you mean? Like, that's just how it was back then and so its like, okay? So like, that's just how it is now days, so like, whatever Dang is doing with this is like, morally alright?
Put a bow on this for me.
Sure, go back in time and talk to the Abolitionists or those who opposed Civil Rights. It's not gray, that's a big misconception. Dang is completely wrong about censoring and flagging discussion on a fucking coup in America. If the discussion devolves a million times, then let it devolve a million times. It's necessary.
Whatever, it's only month three, not too late.
Do you think that's where the battle is currently? People debating between Pigs and Bread? Let's avoid the reductive argument otherwise we can never determine right or wrong. Reductive arguments are Thor's hammer for those that want to be amoral at best.
The animals we eat can play fetch, go look up cows. We think chickens are brainless. I don't think a single one of them likes being raised at mass scale in the way we do it. Few can look at it, but so many can debate down to the atom of whether we should stop eating literal matter. I'm not trying to be aggressive specifically towards you, I'm just trying to disturb a lurkers mind that thinks in this way.
No one is going to look at the factory farm videos today, but they will talk their ass off about this topic. I hope everyone makes the pilgrimage to Youtube at the very least to see it every once in awhile.
Once you become a vampire meat eater it just becomes so hard to turn it off. It is the most immoral thing I do at the moment and I’m trying to create a multi year plan to be done with this. It’s nothing short of a sin, and to say a smarter animal shouldn’t be eaten as opposed to a dumber one just sounds like the words of a vampire, a tribe I also belong to.
Sounds like nonsense. Again, I asked in another comment for an example of some Rust “web” code that exemplifies what you are talking about. You mentioned “ergonomics”, and you mentioned “noob friendly”. I’d love to see some of this Rust code.
Show us, we’ll discuss.
I feel like some devs are so insecure that they really think , ugh, I can’t even fully explain the pathology of the Rust people without cursing them out.
You are not a better developer, that’s ALL I want to say to the Rust people. In fact, most of you are bad developers for doing what you have been doing with this language. You ALL must find a better way to show your intellectual prowess.
I heard you guys are even bugging the Linux people.
Show me some Rust web code that you think exemplifies what you are talking about. I think your example will speak for itself and close this argument. No reason to go back and forth.
Built in Rust for performance and in Python for extensibility
Omg, a team that knows how to selectively use tech as needed. Looking at the Rust web developers in corner.