Imagine we have carpenters and brick layers. Two distinct jobs that maybe have some overlap of tools.
We decide that we have a lot more carpenters than brick layers, so we'll take a carpenters' toolbox and add a few brick layer inspired tools to it (but they're not necessarily the same, and some of the tools that can overlap maybe aren't quite as specialized, nuances, nuances, etc.).
Now, we can tell our managers that our problems are solved.
All of our carpenters can now do masonry work.
The root problem of all of this mess is that both of these domains are different. Problems and solutions in the front-end tend to be different than in the back-end.
Management is sold on this "everyone is an interchangeable cog now" fantasy they have been chasing for decades and crappy decisions are made. We end up with most developers not really learning at least one of the areas of the full stack very well (and not learning both if they are really striving to under-achieve...).
Note: This same thing happened in Java before NodeJS, but in reverse. Back-end developers refused to really learn web development and so we ended up with misguided solutions like GWT and virtually every other high level Java web framework/library.
Perhaps I haven't run into the right people, but mostly my experience with other JavaScript devs is they don't even know the fundamentals really (they don't understand scope rules in JS, they don't really understand weak typing, they don't understand JS is single threaded, they don't understand closures very well, etc.). I don't know if this lack of understanding is due to a lack of experience programming at all, or just not really learning JavaScript (many non-JS devs are forced to learn enough JS to get the front-end working -- or at least seemingly working).
The thought of lowering the bar on development even further is frightening (Johnny did some web development last year, I'm sure he can transition to writing our back-end API since he knows JS). I'm all for anyone learning and improving as a developer -- and sharing in my passion. What I hate is this false confidence more and more people seem to have with everything and the problems it causes (they don't bother to learn the tools they have or the tools that came before them, they are too lazy to learn a new language/framework/library, and they have extreme NIH syndrome).
Imagine we have carpenters and brick layers. Two distinct jobs that maybe have some overlap of tools.
We decide that we have a lot more carpenters than brick layers, so we'll take a carpenters' toolbox and add a few brick layer inspired tools to it (but they're not necessarily the same, and some of the tools that can overlap maybe aren't quite as specialized, nuances, nuances, etc.).
Now, we can tell our managers that our problems are solved. All of our carpenters can now do masonry work.
The root problem of all of this mess is that both of these domains are different. Problems and solutions in the front-end tend to be different than in the back-end.
Management is sold on this "everyone is an interchangeable cog now" fantasy they have been chasing for decades and crappy decisions are made. We end up with most developers not really learning at least one of the areas of the full stack very well (and not learning both if they are really striving to under-achieve...).
Note: This same thing happened in Java before NodeJS, but in reverse. Back-end developers refused to really learn web development and so we ended up with misguided solutions like GWT and virtually every other high level Java web framework/library.
Perhaps I haven't run into the right people, but mostly my experience with other JavaScript devs is they don't even know the fundamentals really (they don't understand scope rules in JS, they don't really understand weak typing, they don't understand JS is single threaded, they don't understand closures very well, etc.). I don't know if this lack of understanding is due to a lack of experience programming at all, or just not really learning JavaScript (many non-JS devs are forced to learn enough JS to get the front-end working -- or at least seemingly working).
The thought of lowering the bar on development even further is frightening (Johnny did some web development last year, I'm sure he can transition to writing our back-end API since he knows JS). I'm all for anyone learning and improving as a developer -- and sharing in my passion. What I hate is this false confidence more and more people seem to have with everything and the problems it causes (they don't bother to learn the tools they have or the tools that came before them, they are too lazy to learn a new language/framework/library, and they have extreme NIH syndrome).