Never read such a long list of inaccurate statements here on Hacker News.
UIs have become more complex in parallel to more sophisticated tooling. Most websites now use persistent state and are reactive, where before those features were not as widespread. So I would say it has evolved, and the entry point for FE dev is closer to typical app development than before (which was closer to design and scripting).
> So I would say it has evolved, and the entry point for FE dev is closer to typical app development than before (which was closer to design and scripting).
This is kind of my point. UI development will always be a thing of course. But the "front end dev" was a phenomena of the early days of the web, and needing someone to wrangle the insane complexity of the browser. Nowadays you just install some framework and off you go without any concerns for browser issues. And so it becomes like any other programming environment, where the average developer of any skill set can do it sufficiently.
Re:The End of Front-End Development
by greenhearth on Monday March 20, 2023 @02:14PM
(#35236055)
Yeah, this is all great and lots of words, but I just spent all morning centering a radio button in a td lol
Re:The End of Front-End Development
by boringuser1 on Monday March 20, 2023 @02:01PM
(#35235796)
> And things like Tailwind/CSS-in-JS are quickly making traditional CSS skills obsolete
This statement literally makes no sense.
Re:The End of Front-End Development
by satvikpendem on Monday March 20, 2023 @02:20PM
(#35236168)
Indeed, I'm not sure how people can use Tailwind or Css-in-JS without, well, knowing CSS. It's literally CSS as another DSL.
Point being that traditional stylesheet based CSS is all but obsolete now. Any dev can pick one of ten thousand component libraries, slap a few utility classes on the element, and call it good enough.
Re:The End of Front-End Development
by satvikpendem on Monday March 20, 2023 @02:42PM
(#35236519)
Not when you're working at a company that wants a specific design. Tailwind and CSS-in-JS have their own issues.
The reason front end development as a skillset is coming to an end is that we've solved all of the problems that front end devs were responsible for. Front end used to be a very specific skill set that dealt with taming the complexities of cross browser support, and shoehorning the browser into a proper application platform. Those concerns are no more. Browsers have all converged on chromium-as-a-standard. Things like Tailwind/CSS-in-JS are quickly making traditional CSS skills obsolete; gone are the days of needing someone who knows how to cast arcane incantations of CSS rules to get an image centered on a page. And with modern frameworks and development techniques, all the stuff about semantic HTML and whatever else is being thrown out in favor of DevX and rendering everything as a pile of <div>s.
There has been a massive shift in the last 3-4 years where practically all job listings are now "full stack", with the expectation that UI work is "just some silly thing we have to deal with" on top of the real work. Perhaps some huge companies will maintain the separation but most have already given it up.