Marijke LuttekesA new blog article, purposely non-technical, so you could share it with your manager.
"Why frontends fail when you approach them like a backend."
@pauleveritt You're gonna like this one.
Paul Everitt@mahryekuh You are correct. Actually, I hated it, because every section activated me, followed by guilt that I won’t do any of that activation.
Loved this part, matched what you explained to me at lunch: “But if you think that you should label everything to achieve maximum clarity, that is where the previous section rears its head.”
I was falling into that trap.
@pauleveritt I’ll take that as a compliment that the content was useful and informative 😁
Lara@mahryekuh reminds me a of an article I wrote some time ago (https://www.htmhell.dev/adventcalendar/2023/24/) :)
@lara_amalia Thanks for sharing! Your article is both mood, hammer, and nail. Excellent points.
It looks familiar to me so maybe I had read it in the past. I also remember that “feminine” comment by Heydon, which got me raging because he’s close to the truth, or even spot on, which is so ridiculous.
Which reminds me that I see a link somewhere between the desire to make the web usable for everyone, which requires some form of empathy, and the fact that the champions of the web’s destruction are often tech bros (who lack in empathy.)
@mahryekuh Thanks for your kind words!
Yes, unfortunately, the people who make decisions about where to invest the money often don't see the importance and value of a good frontend codebase. I discussed this a lot in the past couple of years and my conversation partners were exclusively men. 🥲
@lara_amalia I concluded early in my career that too often it’s more productive to (proverbally) shout at a wall than to convince certain people that quality is not a luxury.
(And yes, all men too, for a lack of women in tech.)g
@lara_amalia There was a guy though who made such an interesting remark, years ago:
When the sales department increases conversions by even 1%, flags go out, cake gets ordered, and they will celebrate success.
But when they have to chance to support hundreds of thousands of extra people through accessibility, for example, they don’t care, despite that being a huge pool of potential new clients.
@mahryekuh yeah… I don‘t get that. But it‘s great to see that there are a lot of people out there „fighting“ for a better and more inclusive web… :)
McNeely@mahryekuh this reminds me of a comment I saw once that compared back-end development as "easy mode" since you know your environment and its constraints are laid out for you ahead of time. Compared to the front-end where you are programing where everyone can see you fail in an unknown environment. You can decide which one is harder
@McNeely Sounds like a solid analysis to me.
Backend still isn’t easy, but it is simpler. (Only calculations scare me, and SOAP, and other people’s poorly-documented APIs.)
Pieter@mahryekuh In my experience doing both frontend and backend, they're complex in different ways.
As a frontender, I definitely didn't have to worry too much about the business logic for handling a multitude of fixed internet installation types. Address resolution, testing for fiber/copper availability, different network owners with their own systems and ways of working, consolidating availability of various modem installation companies into one unified booking procedure, that kind of thing.
@mahryekuh Backend _can_ be simple, definitely, but it really depends on the problem domain.
Jason Reed@mahryekuh I just forwarded this blog post to a young dev on our team. She's currently bridging between frontend and backend development. She did mostly backend during apprenticeship with us, but has started moving toward frontend, and I thought this article would be great for her. Your blog was very timely 😀