

Ask HN: Are front-end developers really "developers"? - willthefirst


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obviouslygreen
The question seems to actually mean "should back end developers consider front
end developers equals."

This is a case of worrying too much about what an irrelevant class of people
thinks. Are you good at what you do? Do your peers understand your skills? Do
your clients or potential clients see the value in your ability? As a
primarily back end developer, that's what I care about, and I think it's a
good metric.

It's natural and not necessarily wrong to look for approval, but at the end of
the day, you need to judge yourself on your own ability. Other people will
judge you, whether you want them to or not, but if you take them seriously --
whether they like you or not -- you have put your self-image in the wrong
hands, i.e. not yours.

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Pwnguinz
First: What kind of working definition of "developer" are you using?

I'm inclined to say "yes". I am a front-end developer, working on everything
from HTML/CSS + JS to the RoR app (controller & views, mostly. Rarely do I
make changes to models, but I do poke in there to see how certain things are
implemented, etc.)

Perhaps if you had asked "are front-end engineers really 'engineers'?", I
would be inclined to answer "No".

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gexla
A developer is anyone who can use the available tools to transform something
into another tool to reach a goal. A developer may do these things
individually or pay others. A developer doesn't need to have skills if the
developer has the resources to obtain others with the needed skills. A
developer might also work for other developers in developing these tools in
exchange for money.

So, yes, I think anyone can be a developer. The bar for becoming a developer
isn't much higher than being able to open a web browser and perhaps search
Google. For example, if you want to create an e-commerce site then there are
lots of hosted services which will set one up for little to no cost.

At the end of the day, you are either reaching your goals or you aren't.
Compare an grandmother who can barely figure out the internet but makes a
healthy income off selling items online (perhaps things she has made which and
have gained a following) and a ninja engineer who has been mired in feature
creep for three years and still isn't close to getting his start-up off the
ground (and probably never will)

~~~
mryan
> A developer doesn't need to have skills if the developer has the resources
> to obtain others with the needed skills.

A person who does not have any development skills is not a developer. The
ability to hire developers does not make one a developer. If I hire someone to
play some Rachmaninoff for me, am I a pianist?

> For example, if you want to create an e-commerce site then there are lots of
> hosted services which will set one up for little to no cost.

If you rent a hosted service with an off the shelf e-commerce site that is
automatically installed by your hosting provider, you are not a developer, you
are someone who has instructed a hosting company to set up an e-commerce site.

Now, you don't need to have any development skills to run a successful online
business, that much is true. But you _do_ need development skills to be an
actual developer.

~~~
gexla
I guess we are getting caught up in semantics here. A non-technical co-founder
who has zero knowledge of even HTML / CSS but has hired a team (and has a
technical co-founder) is obviously not a web developer by the job description
they used to hire that team, but he is still developing that property (the
domain name, which is part of the overall brand) to create value. I suppose
you could also call this person a brand developer, business developer, product
developer, etc.

So, this is a silly question. ;) Personally, if I'm making a profit (assuming
that's my goal) then I could care less what you call me. I'm creating value
where there was none before.

~~~
mryan
> Personally, if I'm making a profit (assuming that's my goal) then I could
> care less what you call me. I'm creating value where there was none before.

Well that's something we can certainly agree on :)

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kls
I personally would say yes, I have done C++, simulation, AI, Perl, C#,
Objective-C, Java, Lisp and many others over the course of a 25 year career.
Currently I mainly do front end development which for obvious reasons requires
JavaScript. I have found the problem space to be just as interesting and in
some areas just as complicated as any of the rest of them. There is serious
development work to be done on the front end, if one looks for that type of
work. Which JavaScript lends itself to just grabbing a library like jQuery and
dressing up a site without actually knowing too much about what is going on,
it also lends itself to building stuff like Dojo or Node which are serious
projects with complex problems being solved. Personally, I find the current
era to be one of the most enjoyable times to be a developer and a lot of that
has to do with what is going on in the front end.

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redmondbarry
Write code that solves problems? Check. Full-fledged programming language?
Check.

I don't see how the fact that this code runs in a browser would somehow make
front-end people "not developers".

Is coding up GUI's for native mobile or traditional desktop apps also "not
development"?

~~~
saiko-chriskun
Agreed. This question is ridiculous :/.

~~~
willthefirst
I think my question comes from the fact that FED's need to engage less than
backenders with strict compsci concepts, unless we're writing JS. I think I
meant to ask whether HTML/CSS and all the variants and elaborations count as
"programming".

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ishbits
I believe they are - more now than ever.

However, I believe a traditional developer can jump into the frontend faster
than a frontend developer can move into backend development. It doesn't mean
it'll look good, but a designer can help here.

Frontend development seems to revolve around dealing with finickiness, rather
than dealing with sound software construction. That may be changing. And I
myself a jumping into the frontend a bit more - if only to better convey my
thoughts to the real frontend guys.

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mnicole
Front-end devs are absolutely developers. A better question is why we allow
people who don't know how the web works to design for it.

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EnderMB
Anyone that has worked on a web site or application of significant size will
say that a front-end developer is as much a developer as anyone else.

Sure, HTML isn't that hard, but when you're dealing with cross-browser issues,
supporting legacy browsers and then writing hundreds of lines of JavaScript
you appreciate that it can be really hard work!

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frobozz
Are back-end developers really "developers"? Surely if you aren't developing
the full stack from raw minerals to painting pixels, someone else has done all
the hard work, and you're just doing the easy bit and plugging it in.

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dotborg
Modern front-end developer is more like racing car driver, he is just driving
the car aka using tools he is given by developers working on them.

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johnny22
what led you to ask this question? why wouldn't they be?

