[zachpendleton]

I can't help but feel bad for folks who are coming to front-end dev now. with such a massive (and rapidly changing) list of "you should learn..." subjects, I think the biggest challenge is keeping focus on the most fundamental things.

I've interviewed so many junior and mid-level candidates who will opine at length about react vs. angular or why redux is the one true way to manage state, but who don't know about `setTimeout` or other fundamental language features. that kind of spotty, "just throw it together" knowledge may be enough to land a job somewhere, but it certainly isn't enough to solve anything beyond factory-floor, Lego-like app delivery.

I wish I knew the solution, because the problem only seems to be getting worse despite my thinking that "peak framework" is just around the corner in the js community.

[imbiased]

OP here. I can relate to this on other domains. But maybe in some cases Lego-like app delivery is enough? In my case I really mostly want to do simple static sites now (and build up experience to make more complex apps soon), the reusable components of React and the static site generation means one can work with a limited subset of JS and do _something_. Not aiming to be a specialised Frontend dev.

It's hard to do a compromise when needing to know other parts of the stack (backend, DS, devops). Perhaps in several scenarios one can be happy with some Lego-like apps (pareto rule) and hire specialised frontend devs when needed?