I still remember being at a conference about 6 years ago. We were on lunch and talking shop with several other front-end developers. Of course jQuery comes up and people start asking if they should learn "vanilla" JS first before using jQuery.
Still remember one developer blurting out, "Yeah, jQuery is so easy to use, you just cop/paste the code, you don't even really have to know JS. I don't see any reason to learn the basics of JS." The crazy thing is there were a lot of heads nodding in agreement at the table. That's how it used to be, if a developer needed to do something with jQuery, they'd just look for a plugin and use that.
Today? No way can get away without knowing the language. Too many frameworks, too many options to mix/match languages to get a really good workflow process. You can't just jump in and not know how Angular directives work or Backbone collections work without knowing exactly how these things work.
> Today? No way can get away without knowing the language.
Maybe not in the word of startups and Silicon Valley, but there are tons of jobs for web developers across the world where simple jQuery knowledge will make you the best front end developer at your company.
That's not to say it's a good things. It's just a fact of life for many companies. Anyone better than that will leave before long for the greener pastures that you're referring to.
the way I experienced it was really the word Front End really just went through different meanings. There are a lot of UI jobs where javascript isn't a major focus, though some of it is there. Despite what is heard on hacker news, a lot of dev is happening without angular, react etc.
I used to answer to jobs for Front End developer, but now you see Front end jobs posted with no relationship to design arts. Those positions are now UI Web Designer. Front End now from my perspective at looking at job postings might as well be javascript only or javascript plus SASS.
I still remember being at a conference about 6 years ago. We were on lunch and talking shop with several other front-end developers. Of course jQuery comes up and people start asking if they should learn "vanilla" JS first before using jQuery.
Still remember one developer blurting out, "Yeah, jQuery is so easy to use, you just cop/paste the code, you don't even really have to know JS. I don't see any reason to learn the basics of JS." The crazy thing is there were a lot of heads nodding in agreement at the table. That's how it used to be, if a developer needed to do something with jQuery, they'd just look for a plugin and use that.
Today? No way can get away without knowing the language. Too many frameworks, too many options to mix/match languages to get a really good workflow process. You can't just jump in and not know how Angular directives work or Backbone collections work without knowing exactly how these things work.
IT's a different world out there nowadays.