The modern web developer is more a software engineer than what I would call a web developer. The app-ification of the web isn’t a case of writing some HTML, authoring a CSS file, and using a new jQuery-like library to get that sweet interaction.
You are going to need to know how to program; like a real programmer. You are going to need to know some very different approaches to how you build, deploy, and maintain things. You’re going to need to question the value of some of your strongest held best practices.
And you’re going to need to get to grips with tooling. So much tooling. Because the new web development has matured enough to be dangerous to ignore, but not enough to be simple and entirely stable.
Matt’s summary of his transition closely aligns what I’ve been going through. Even though I saw the writing on the wall with Javascript, I couldn’t motivate myself to travel down this path because it was a repeat of what I left behind in Computer Science 101 in college. I just wasn’t interested at the time and this felt like more of the same.
It’s clear now that a programmer path for the web requires skills that I don’t have and must continue to learn. I have to cross the line to the left brain from the safety of the right brain.
I think I’ll write a post about my journey and struggles.
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