
Ask HN: Is front-end engineering ever going away? - ud0
So I was thinking if there would be a time when the world wouldn&#x27;t need front-end engineers and it would be better to be a full-stack software engineer to be more flexible in the future.
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digitalzombie
Uh.. I was full stack engineer and I would rather stay mostly backend than
touch front end.

It's just wild wild west when I was still a full stack dev.

There was these clientside rendering framework emberjs, angular, knockoutjs,
etc...

What the hell man, now the flavor is fluxjs and reactjs or whatever.

This is on top of html and css being more of an art then a science. Then came
along the grid system to fix most of the warts but cross browser
compatibility, etc...

I don't believe front end engineer is going away because there is just so much
stuff in front end and back end to be for one person. You can be a fullstack
but you can't be a master of all of it unless you got no life, no family,
etc..

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RUG3Y
I do a little bit of everything, front-end, back-end, databases etc., and man,
the front-end feels like such a janky disaster to me. I really miss the
simplicity of the "old" internet that I had growing up (I'm in my 30's). I'm
with you, I'd much rather be writing code on the back-end and spend my time
solving interesting problems. My front-end problems are almost invariably
styling/ display issues, etc. The kind of problems that are just labor to
solve, not interesting.

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anonyfox
I really hope for a standardized universal UI to emerge, maybe something like
the futuristic screens in Deus Ex games. There just needs to be something like
a hypermedia-api on a server, some semantic content markup, and all consumers
(browsers, terminals, ...) handle everything else.

As a developer I just want to provide an data/api endpoint and say somehow
"this is an universal UI app".

No, Basic HTML isnt enough, and wiring together data into presentable forms
over and over again isnt particular fun or exciting after a while. Except you
learn a new frontend framework for every project... :)

~~~
spcelzrd
I think the front end guys are thinking, I really hope for a standardized
universal back end to emerge, maybe something like HAL or a Siri that works.

I'm joking, of course. But I think front end and full stack developers are
safe for a very long time.

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mvpu
Um, no. If you're asking about JavaScript, be warned: it's invading the
backend.

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mythrwy
I prefer the term "infesting".

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mrmondo
Devistating and consuming memory and executing it off the stack

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et-al
If you're talking about just constructing new JS views, creating templates,
and styling them, yes I think that will be relegated a WYSIWYG editor for a
designer to weld.

I know people said this was going to happen when Dreamweaver came out, but the
languages were still clunky. CSS had barely come out and layouts were done by
nesting tables within tables. The machine-created code was shit _and_ browsers
were wildly inconsistent. Now we have decent browser consistency between
Firefox/Chrome/Safari, CSS grids are arriving, and React component web views
are gaining more traction. So in 5-10 years, why can't we have an editor that
does all this for you?

Yes, there will always be a need for custom interfaces. So a small amount of
front-end folks will remain hand-crafting artisan components (and perhaps
selling them on a Wordpress-like market place), while other people will either
need to move into design/UX roles, or further down the stack.

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dagw
Depends what you mean by front-end engineer. If you are interested in front-
end work I would focus on brushing up on your UX and design skill. I have no
particular need for someone who only knows how to implement a front end based
on an exact spec, I would however love to have a developer on my team who can
actually both come up with and implement a good looking, easy to use front
end.

~~~
responde
This is not realistic. UX, design and HTML/CSS/JS(this one's a beast)

Have all become complex such that it's rare to find someone who can handle all
aforementioned roles efficiently. Web UI's are becoming complex everyday, and
rightly so as the world has demanded more from the web.

It is very unrealistic to handle all roles or find someone who does.

~~~
eswat
It’s not that unrealistic if the team is willing to let go of the idea of
finding someone that’s perfect in all three: UX, design and front-end.

Teams just have to find a person that’s effective given their existing team
and their immediate goals. I have broad skills across all three but double-
down on whatever vertical the team I’m working with needs the most help with
and this does not require me having to handle all three roles perfectly.

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RikNieu
I don't think so. There would always be a need for specialists.

Maybe full-stack engineers would have an easier time finding employment(as
requiters keep on piling up those needs-to-know requirements), but some shops
will always value someone who's shit-hot at one specific thing in particular,
as opposed to merely competent at a lot.

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edimaudo
There is still a demand for front end devs since there are so many frameworks
that are coming out and so many to maintain. I would still go for full stack
roles as it would give you better job security. Plus, it would gives you a
better view of how the system works.

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peterchon
Since we're heading towards a AI-driven applications, perhaps front-end has
plateaued. However, would full-stack still be so relevant if front end is no-
longer a concern?

