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by sapeien
3440 days ago
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It depends on what you already know, I think embedded development with systems level languages and hardware know-how is a very durable skill. On the other hand, some fields like web development have peaked a while ago, I would argue that 2012 was the high watermark. I think it's a very precarious choice of career right now. It has been steadily going downhill since the introduction of trendy front-end frameworks that don't offer any value to the end user (including React, Angular, et al). The culture stopped being about making usable and accessible interfaces for people, and more about "component architecture", "server-side rendering", "tree shaking", that solve problems created by the very tools they are using. That isn't to say that web development is dead, but I think that the future will be more specialized around certain features of the platform such as WebAssembly, WebRTC, WebGL, Web Audio, et al. And these will be more readily picked up by people with more durable skills, than those who only know the most popular front-end framework. |
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Speaking as a confirmed cynic, that seems overly cynical. ;-)
The problems being solved by the web framework hamster wheel are those of rising bars for usability and speed, with measurable in $$$ effects (ie. an extra 1s delay could increase shopping-cart abandonment rate by 1.5%). Which matters a lot more at web-scale.
So, these trendy frameworks are solving problems that most developers shouldn't worry about (it is premature optimization) but that matter a great deal to the companies that release them (Google: Angular and Polymer; Facebook: React and Flux; etc.). OTOH, it is tempting to tap into of all the engineering effort that goes into libraries like these. You just have to know where to stop before sinking into the HammerFactoryFactory mire. ;-)