[jwells89]

The thing about front end web specifically is that by default, devs aren’t equipped with tools that will guide them down “happy paths” for most things. The effects of this aren’t too visible for small projects and even large projects early on, but as in your example with table rows, that will change as soon as these projects meet even slightly demanding real world usage.

To be good at front end web, one needs to care deeply and sink a ton of time and energy into framework and component choice and understanding what’s going on under the hood. Gluing together whatever is shiny or trendy at the moment without deeper consideration is a surefire way to end up with something that technically works but is thoroughly mediocre.

Of course deeper understanding of the technologies being used is helpful in other types of front end as well, but it’s not quite as important there because they have well established conventions and best practices that cut past trouble of this sort. Point in case, in an iOS or Android app, the system stock table views with many rows won’t perform badly because as long as you’re using the APIs as designed, they recycle their cells right out of the box — no need to hunt down a special package or anything.