Re:Ask HN: How quickly do web dev skills become obsolete?
by k__ on Thursday April 27, 2017 @11:49AM
(#14212377)
Depends on how concrete they are.
I'm a front-end developer.
I learned the CSS box model and how to write HTML once and use this knowledge for over 10 years now. CSS got a few new selectors since then, but the core stayed the same. Just this month I had to learn Flexbox for React-Native purposes, which felt like learning a whole new CSS, but other than that not much changed.
2011 I learned JavaScript in depth, with all the books, Pro JavaScript Techniques, JavaScript: The Good Parts, etc. Till ES2015 I didn't have to learn much new and all of that is still valid knowledge, I just don't use some of it anymore, because better ES2015 alternatives.
Some people say, there are new frameworks every month and I can't argue much with that. On the other hand, no one forces you to use a new framework every now and then. I used ExtJS, Ember and React in production. I could have learned on of them and used them till now. They're all still maintained and updated. Went away from ExtJS to Ember, because Ember is free and ExtJS rather expensive. Ember didn't have as much out-of-the box as ExtJS, but the stuff made with Ember felt "more web" to me. Also some of the concepts were easier than in ExtJS. Then I switched from Ember to React, because it had even less concepts that were also easier than Ember. Also React seemed to be much more than a simple "web framework" because of things like React-Native or ReactXP.
I almost scored a ExtJS project this year and the lead dev said, I could use most of my ExtJS4 skills, I acquired 2011, in the current version of ExtJS.
I'm a front-end developer.
I learned the CSS box model and how to write HTML once and use this knowledge for over 10 years now. CSS got a few new selectors since then, but the core stayed the same. Just this month I had to learn Flexbox for React-Native purposes, which felt like learning a whole new CSS, but other than that not much changed.
2011 I learned JavaScript in depth, with all the books, Pro JavaScript Techniques, JavaScript: The Good Parts, etc. Till ES2015 I didn't have to learn much new and all of that is still valid knowledge, I just don't use some of it anymore, because better ES2015 alternatives.
Some people say, there are new frameworks every month and I can't argue much with that. On the other hand, no one forces you to use a new framework every now and then. I used ExtJS, Ember and React in production. I could have learned on of them and used them till now. They're all still maintained and updated. Went away from ExtJS to Ember, because Ember is free and ExtJS rather expensive. Ember didn't have as much out-of-the box as ExtJS, but the stuff made with Ember felt "more web" to me. Also some of the concepts were easier than in ExtJS. Then I switched from Ember to React, because it had even less concepts that were also easier than Ember. Also React seemed to be much more than a simple "web framework" because of things like React-Native or ReactXP.
I almost scored a ExtJS project this year and the lead dev said, I could use most of my ExtJS4 skills, I acquired 2011, in the current version of ExtJS.
So...
Is Web development changing fast? Probably.
Is it changing fundamentally? Probably not.