[bill-nordwall]

I agree with Chris here - I wince a little bit every time I see a candidate start off on the whiteboard with a dollar sign.

However, this article emphasis on Javascript at the expense of the other technologies and soft skills that make a truly excellent front-end engineer - HTML/CSS, solid understanding of SEO, Accessibility (WCAG/508/WAI-ARIA), etc.

I've interviewed plenty of front-end engineers who breezed through a similar no-framework javascript question, but fell to pieces when I had them hand-code a three-column, fixed width, centered layout in HTML/CSS (nav/content/sidebar) with the stipulation that the content column appear first in the HTML source.

These candidates also tend not to know:

  - What rel="nofollow" means
  - What WAI-ARIA is.
  - What browsers were affected by and how to trigger Quirks Mode.
  - The difference between PNG-8 and PNG-24

Front-end engineering is a holistic discipline that demands a wide array of skills across a big chunk of the spectrum between back-end developer and visual designer. Overemphasizing Javascript skills at the expense of others is a dangerous precedent.

EDIT: Fixed formatting.