The Great Divide

This post by Chris all about the growing rift in the front-end development community is worth every second of your time as not only does it reveal the arguments we’ve been having over the last couple of years but it also shows just how complicated the web has become:

Is there any solution to these problems of suffering craftsmanship and skill devaluation? Are the problems systemic and deeply rooted, or are they surface level and without severe consequence? Is the divide real, or a temporary rift? Is the friction settling down or heating up? Will the front-end developer skill set widen or narrow as the years pass?

As Chris mentions, my job title is no longer “front-end developer” but instead Font Complainer, Div Designer, or Adult Boy That Cares Too Much About Accessibility and CSS and Component Design but Doesn’t Care One Bit About GraphQL or Rails or Redux but I Feel Really Bad About Not Caring About This Other Stuff Though.

Joking aside, I have a ton of feelings about this subject and although Chris notes a ton of the technical changes in the industry I can’t help but feel a slight pang of cynicism as to why this divide has been created. My hot take, without any context whatsoever, is that the role of the front-end developer is not changing because of technical changes in the field. It’s something much darker than that.