DEV Community

Cover image for As a developer, I hate ... ?
Bek Brace
Bek Brace

Posted on

As a developer, I hate ... ?

In your career as a developer, what are the main three things that you hate about being in the tech world or as being a web dev / software engineer ?

Top comments (109)

Collapse
 
nombrekeff profile image
Keff

Hype, web3 and NFTs, it's all BS

Collapse
 
tccodez profile image
Tim Carey

Do JavaScript SPA libraries/frameworks fall under hype? Lol

Collapse
 
bacloud22 profile image
aben • Edited

Oh Tim bro, 100% they ruined what web is for students and wanna be developers. They think React is a must. Well in reality, they would be better challenging themselves with basic algorithms and data structures, then http and crypto... instead. It's so sad for me personally because I respect education system and science in general. I feel pitty about the whole the situation.

Collapse
 
bacloud22 profile image
aben

Same as you!! Add to this cryptocurrencies,

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace

yep, definitely cryptocurrency !

Collapse
 
adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Yes I completely agree

Collapse
 
moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

I hate... the industry and the community being driven by social considerations and gamification.

Peer-pressure, cargo-cult mentality, hero-worship, the rise of development "influencers" and the importance people - especially junior developers - hang on things like the number of Twitter followers or GitHub stars your project has.

Collapse
 
leob profile image
leob • Edited

Best comment ever, I've also noticed this over the last few years, even on dev.to! People go crazy over other people's opinions about them ... time to say "no" to that.

Extremely harmful, why do you think mental issues are on the rise to such a huge extent, especially among younger people? We just drive each other crazy - non-devs with "glamorous" insta profiles or with producing the most popular TikTok clips, devs with 3K plus github star projects or with nonsense like "as a developer you SHOULD ... (fill in anything that apparently we SHOULD do nowadays)".

Time to focus again on our love for the profession and the projects, and less on the stars and the likes and all of the ego inflation.

Collapse
 
maddy profile image
Maddy

This is an interesting one. Why do people care about Github stars? It's something that I've started to notice when I joined Twitter last year.

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace

Exactly, I agree with you Ben and Maddy !
The same when others on social media care about the likes, views, followers etc...
The criteria of evaluation is totally distorted these days

Collapse
 
mtrussell profile image
Matt Trussell

I guess the thing that frustrates me most, and most often, is bad documentation.

If you have a project that is used by developers, there should be really good, in-depth instructions on how to do all of the things your software is able to do. We shouldn't have to go to stackoverflow or reddit or dev.to to figure out how to use your gem, plugin, api, or whatever.

If you take the time to build something that developers are going to use, please take the time to document all the use cases. Some short video walkthroughs wouldn't hurt either.

And, I guess this goes for consumer facing products as well. If there are any not-so-intuitive intricacies at all, take a day or two to create a how-to guide with images and video and a faq.

Collapse
 
harithzainudin profile image
Muhammad Harith Zainudin

a bad documentation is a nightmare for programmer😵😵
It makes us keep guessing on how to use it. If it works, hoorayy. If it not for a few days, off we go then to another function, solution or libraries =,=

Collapse
 
muchwowdodge profile image
Anton Rhein

Mood. It isn't a sign of quality if have to inspect the code of a library in order to be able to use it. You wouldn't reverse engineer an IC just to know how to use it either. (By the way, Microchip data sheets /manuals are gems when it comes to documentation 🥰)

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace • Edited

Thanks Matt for sharing your professional experience, certainly documentation could play a critical a role in the success or failure of your project.
You code often with Ruby, yes ?

Collapse
 
mtrussell profile image
Matt Trussell

Yes, primarily with Ruby on Rails. A lot of JS too, but most of my day-to-day is ruby.

Collapse
 
cooldudeno13026 profile image
CooldudeNo13026

Web3 because it's overhyped

Collapse
 
lico profile image
SeongKuk Han • Edited

Updating trends is too fast, especially, in web development, I think.

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace

this one drives me crazy !

Collapse
 
insidewhy profile image
insidewhy • Edited

And yet most of us are still stuck with React. Which isn't anywhere near as good as the hype would have us believe.

Collapse
 
greggcbs profile image
GreggHume

I hate that we use javascript to do things the browser should have built in.

Form validation is still primitive - need a lib, forms in themselves are old - need submission states and error messages, css needs sass, css grid just not quite it - layouts need to be easier, mobile browser web api sucks so we need native apps, fetch api is not as good as axios, position sticky does not apply a class when sticky, carousels + sliders + dropdowns + modals etc.... should be native browser components. We need clunky serverside javascript rendering frameworks that frankly are a hack with hydration.

Like w3 are sleeping, as a web developer life is tedious and way harder then it needs to be. Designs and expectations are getting higher but the browser technology is crawling along.

Collapse
 
moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair • Edited

With some of these things, like form validation, the browser does handle a lot of it pretty well. You can specify types of input, patterns to match and whether something's required. You can't dump a load of buisness logic or add dependencies between fields, but that's starting to get too complex for HTML.

Saying that axios is better than fetch is fine, but that's very self-selecting - of course random-third-party-thing is "more" than bundled-thing, because if it wasn't, then nobody would have developed it in the first place!

Collapse
 
andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

Unrealistic deadlines that give yourself, team and the client a headache.

Collapse
 
paratron profile image
Christian Engel

Bad or missing documentation

Collapse
 
stvbyr profile image
Steve

Bro mentality, hustle culture, trends, smartasses.

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace

I agree with you totally !
Either seniors and cocky or juniors and smartasses !

Collapse
 
alekss profile image
sskela

Person's who don't want to learn or even Try new things, because something always has worked that way.

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace

yep, i've seen that !

Collapse
 
khokon profile image
Khokon M.

Working on projects I don't like!

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace

i know what you mean :(

Collapse
 
bacloud22 profile image
aben • Edited

Somebody somewhere talked longly about "surrogate activities". Just saying...

We could benefit technology at a society level way more If only we were approaching science and work with a little less arrogance.

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace

"work with a little less arrogance." - Couldn't agree more !!

Collapse
 
bacloud22 profile image
aben

the very example of arrogance and stupidity youtu.be/xqgH9j3x2OE

Thread Thread
 
ecyrbe profile image
ecyrbe

It's a parody account...

Thread Thread
 
bacloud22 profile image
aben

if it is, it is doing so much harm. But I still think it is not, and the guy is delusional or disillusioning young developers for some Youtube revenue.

Collapse
 
hacker4world profile image
hacker4world

Css and regex

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace

interesting, you hate CSS ?
Regex I understand, but why do you hate CSS ?

Collapse
 
hacker4world profile image
hacker4world

It is always impossible for me to make sth good with css

Thread Thread
 
greggcbs profile image
GreggHume

yeah cause css is not catching up fast enough with the expectations of design. I agree with you.

Thread Thread
 
hacker4world profile image
hacker4world

Yeah

Collapse
 
palalet profile image
RadekHavelka

And because its not self explaining, if you want to achieve some things, you cant do without years of knowledge ... but its just a style ...

Collapse
 
roman_22c01bcfb71 profile image
Roman

You can use a CSS extension called tailwind. (It makes CSS realy easy)

Collapse
 
hacker4world profile image
hacker4world

But that could cause crazy html

Collapse
 
bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace • Edited

Wow that was very thoughtful, thank you very much for sharing your rich experience.
Your first point always was an enigma for me, I remember a few years back, there was an ad made by Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, the creator of Dropbox and a few more, they were to convey the idea that coding is easy and that anyone can code. I didn't agree, and didn't understand what was their drive for such a campaign!

Collapse
 
roman_22c01bcfb71 profile image
Roman

Yes it true! I saw a video on YouTube titled: "Bill Gates: Coding is Easy". I clicked on it and Bill Gates said "Coding is like in real life, if it rains then take an umbrella". (Thats a line of code such as an if statement.) I was so mad that I clicked out of the video. I didn't agree!

Thread Thread
 
harithzainudin profile image
Muhammad Harith Zainudin

oh how I wish it was easy. but coding is more than that!

Collapse
 
thorstenhirsch profile image
Thorsten Hirsch

Personalized ad algorithms. I think they're getting dumber by the minute.