RE: Is front-end web development dying?
September 6, 2018 at 12:29 am
(This post was last modified: September 6, 2018 at 12:32 am by bennyboy.)
.I handle all parts of design for my site, including writing Android apps to expose audio recognition to the browser. At the risk of seeming immodest, I know a lot about web design.
The short answer to your question is this: if you specialize, you can expect your specialty to become obsolete. You are unlikely, for example, to be paid money for writing code in Pascal. If you have general abilities (like an understanding of how to lay things out in a visually appealing way, or a good feeling for how nested logic works), then you can pick up the next wave and move forward.
The long answer requires you to please understand what a browser DOES: it takes a markup script, and then interprets it and renders it to the screen. It monitors interactions, and sends information back to a server.
This basic interplay, between a centralized data provider, and an individual consumer which renders the results of specific data calls in a way appropriate to a user's device, is probably eternal. It's probably intrinsic to the nature of data, and data consumption, itself.
HTML will die, replaced by a new standard driven by new technology, or it will evolve. CSS will die or evolve, and Javascript. They will all be unrecognizable in ten years. But that doesn't matter, because the underlying PROCESS will be the same: you'll have to decide how to present data on different media.
The reason WIX and GODADDY's builders work is that they are templated: the basic navigation system and so on will be pretty much okay for most users. But if you tried to do almost ANY of the things that I do on my site, you'd realize the problem with automation-- it makes custom solutions or innovative ideas almost impossible to carry out. For anything but the most basic functions, those builders are pretty useless.
I'll give you an example. I've written an Android app that loads up my homepage, and listens for Javascript that triggers Android functions-- especially voice recording. The Android app then converts the audio to an .mp4 format and uploads it to the homepage, where it serves as the audio track to a slide show made by customers.
It relies very heavily on specialized Javascript routines that I had to write myself-- they time the clicks between slides for images and subtitles and so on. Then it sends that data to the server, which reprocesses the audio, and sends out SMS messages to customers with a link to their new slide show.
Ask me if I could use an auto-designed site for any of that.
The short answer to your question is this: if you specialize, you can expect your specialty to become obsolete. You are unlikely, for example, to be paid money for writing code in Pascal. If you have general abilities (like an understanding of how to lay things out in a visually appealing way, or a good feeling for how nested logic works), then you can pick up the next wave and move forward.
The long answer requires you to please understand what a browser DOES: it takes a markup script, and then interprets it and renders it to the screen. It monitors interactions, and sends information back to a server.
This basic interplay, between a centralized data provider, and an individual consumer which renders the results of specific data calls in a way appropriate to a user's device, is probably eternal. It's probably intrinsic to the nature of data, and data consumption, itself.
HTML will die, replaced by a new standard driven by new technology, or it will evolve. CSS will die or evolve, and Javascript. They will all be unrecognizable in ten years. But that doesn't matter, because the underlying PROCESS will be the same: you'll have to decide how to present data on different media.
The reason WIX and GODADDY's builders work is that they are templated: the basic navigation system and so on will be pretty much okay for most users. But if you tried to do almost ANY of the things that I do on my site, you'd realize the problem with automation-- it makes custom solutions or innovative ideas almost impossible to carry out. For anything but the most basic functions, those builders are pretty useless.
I'll give you an example. I've written an Android app that loads up my homepage, and listens for Javascript that triggers Android functions-- especially voice recording. The Android app then converts the audio to an .mp4 format and uploads it to the homepage, where it serves as the audio track to a slide show made by customers.
It relies very heavily on specialized Javascript routines that I had to write myself-- they time the clicks between slides for images and subtitles and so on. Then it sends that data to the server, which reprocesses the audio, and sends out SMS messages to customers with a link to their new slide show.
Ask me if I could use an auto-designed site for any of that.
