[divtxt]

I find web development less enjoyable than 5 or 10 years ago because of the increasing size and complexity of the stack.

At least us old fogies have had the last 15 years to learn web development. How the hell do young programmers learn such a big stack in a few years? I'm guessing half using youthful energy and the other half skipped in blissful ignorance?! :)

[seldo]

Specialization.

When I was starting out, I did design, frontend dev, backend dev, and ops work. Over the last 15 years these positions have all split into specializations: design was the first to go, then ops. The split between frontend and backend opened up in the middle of the last decade, and continues to split even further into controller and model devs on the back end and Javascript and CSS people on the frontend.

The increasingly popularity of frameworks stems from this specialization. It's more important than ever to have separation of concerns, because as apps get larger, individual devs are doing smaller and smaller sections of the work.

Young programmers don't know less than us -- they know way more than we do, but on a much narrower range.

[mattmanser]

I really don't agree with this, design/dev have always been different specializations, serious javascript has only appeared in the last few years and I've only seen people actually describing themselves exclusively as a 'frontend dev' in the last 6 months.

And 'frontend dev' at the moment seems to be as malleable as a SEO was, sometimes it means a designer who can add jQuery and a couple of modules to a page, sometimes it means a talented javascript programmer with an in depth knowledge of HTML/CSS.

And young programmers can't know way more than older programmers, if you keep learning.

[ams6110]

How the hell do young programmers learn such a big stack in a few years?

They don't. Witness the never-ending repetition of basic mistakes leading to SQL injection vulnerabilities, script injection, etc.

[smokeyj]

I would bet more SQL injections occur due to lazyness than inexperience.

[adrianmsmith]

I think one would need data to confirm that.

I mean I am lazy, but not so much that I would knowingly write insecure code for my customers; I'm can't imagine that many developers are different in that respect?

[abahgat]

Plus, many database libraries make it significantly easier to write vulnerable code than it is to write secure code.

[jamesbritt]

I find web development less enjoyable than 5 or 10 years ago because of the increasing size and complexity of the stack.

Part of this is that stacks that start off all light and fresh "we're not Struts!" before long acquire a few too many "must-have" features until, Lo! they are Struts.

Then it's time to drop that framework and find something more fresh, light, and lean, and enjoy it while it lasts.

[rbanffy]

The past weekend (during a RHoK event) I was introduced to TipFy by a young dude who's far faster than me in grokking new tools. It was easy, fresh and led to a fun weekend of web development.

Tipfy runs on the Google App Engine Python stack. It's a bit rough on the edges, but that's part of the fun.

[billybob]

I started programming in web development about 4 years ago: first HTML and CSS, then adding Javascript and AJAX, then PHP, then Ruby and Rails. In the process I learned a fair amount about MySQL and I can do the most basic Unix server administration.

I'm on my third full-time web development job and I now feel decently confident in my abilities. But yes: it's a big stack, and overwhelming. Everywhere I turn I see more things I don't know. I'm always reading and trying to improve.

Were there ever simpler times? It's an interesting thought to me. I find the constant challenge to be interesting, but admittedly, sometimes tiring.

[Terretta]

How the hell do young programmers learn such a big stack in a few years?

Welcome to the museum of modern wheels -- we have every shape but round.

[czDev]

That's the point - you don't learn the whole stack, you let your framework manage it.

[rick888]

This is one of my problems with younger developers. They slap framework code together rather than actually figuring out what's going on underneath.

It's one of the reasons I still use PHP. It's the perfect balance between framework and coding.

[rbanffy]

It's not about being able to add code to every piece of your stack, but understanding what all of its external interfaces do. How many programmers you know can do that with their stacks?