Experience can be a bad thing. It is this that makes junior developers such a positive part of any team. Folks from different backgrounds who never learned the bad habits of those that came before them.
By bad habits, I mean little things where I use a certain HTML tag or attribute that you'd only use if you started using it before the other thing existed. These things stick.
To all the code newbies out there, you have a perspective I can't possibly have anymore, and a certain skillset orientation that I will never have. Bring this awareness with confidence into your next job interview.
Geocities is definitely my coding origin story. Folks that came up on Commodore 64 or anything else have their own versions of this. We still bring a lot of value, so don't think of us as dinosaurs, but we need new blood all the time in this industry!
Top comments (39)
Huh. This may be one of the few times I don't quite like one of your articles, Ben.
I mean, I get what you're trying to say, sort of.
But you only talk down about experience, instead of showing both sides.
In an industry plagued by ageism and "replace all the experienced people with fresh out of college kids cause they're cheaper", I worry how this post comes across.
Thanks for the note Anthony.
I thought about this when writing it, and I tried not to be ageist. I've always equated ageism with age and a culture of disrespect in that regard rather than experience level per se. Like, if a 45 year old is looking for their first dev job, they might experience ageism due to perhaps not fitting in culturally with a team made up of 25 year olds.
That's just an explanation of my reasoning here, and I'm definitely taking what you said to heart.
I certainly don’t think he’s being ageist at all! He is just writing a quick pep post for people entering the industry who may not be very confident (hello 👋 it me).
Saying that, I can completely understand what it must be like to be an industry veteran and see lots of posts geared towards juniors. What Ben has done here is say that newbies have perspective he can’t possibly have - I think that goes both ways. Experienced devs have perspective that I won’t for many years and that’s awesome. I know I have a lot to learn from them and I certainly am not in here thirstily rushing to replace them.
If you feel we’d benefit from hearing an experienced dev’s perspective (I think we would!) and offer yours in a way that doesn’t minimise others’ experiences, then I’m sure tons of people would love to hear it.
I don't think Ben was being ageist.
But the succinctness of this article is basically summed up as "Juniors have a fresh perspective" ((I agree)) "and experienced devs have bad habits that can't be corrected".
Almost a "can't teach old dogs new tricks" and the article itself isn't ageist; but in an industry that is ageist, it feels incomplete to me. That's all.
Though on re-read I can see he's specifically talking about himself and the post is too short to go into detail or his opinion on any of the presented topics in depth, so my initial reaction is definitely overkill.
So I retroactively would rather say: I'd rather see a long form article on what you're feeling/discussing here because the short version is vague enough to have a weird message? Something like that. :)
Ah sorry, I misread “in an industry with ageism” as you saying the post was ageist. My bad! Agree that long form stuff on both sides would be really interesting.
Re: your other reply, Geocities and Angelfire were also where I got my very basic start as a teenager (and Expages too if that’s the third one you’re thinking of?) I sometimes think what my career would be like now had I stuck with it 🤔
It appears Ben pumps out micro-content on daily. I can see a positive message. I would just give him the benefit of the doubt that he slapped this one together and he's just working on a time constraint.
One of the things I love most about DEV is that you don't need to post a massive article or blog to have a space to share your thoughts, tips, knowledge, opinions. Let's try and keep it that way!
I think this comment is tech debt and needs a junior to rewrite it from scratch without guidance.
Dear Ben
Not to fear, you can bring your old school tricks to the future.
npmjs.com/package/react-blink-tag
New Dev.to PR:
HOC from react-blink-tag and npmjs.com/package/react-marquee to create tags.
oh noes....!
Also want to point something else out:
I'm with you on GeoCities (and AngelFire and ... there was one more I can't remember).
Got my start there too honestly and I was building out crappy websites for online RPGs I was playing. And that honestly got me started as a programmer. First with HTML for GeoCities, and then quick quickly into Perl to write my own chat system. I owe my career to those crappy RPG sites I made. :D
EDIT: waves to anyone who remembers RPG chats on WBS/NexusRP back in the day
I agree. Curious when someone will start talking about 'crappy React sites got me started into web dev in the 2010's'.
It's all going to be crap. Looking at React now looks shiny and cool. Looking at it with 2030's view is crap.
What if I think it is crap now? LOL.
Lycos, perhaps? I think I made something on there.
In Zen Buddhism we have something called “beginners mind.” You must always keep a beginners mind.
There’s a parable I love...I’ll update it for the context.
A coding expert goes to a coding guru to learn more about development. He says “I’m an expert in web development. I’ve been doing it for a decade. But you’re so much better. I want to learn from you.” And so the guru says “Of course. Sit down and let’s start with a cup of coffee.”
He pulls out a couple mugs and heats up the water, brews the coffee, and starts pouring a cup of coffee for his new student.
The mug fills up and he keeps pouring. Coffee is spilling everywhere.
The expert’s like “Dude what are you doing? You’re spilling coffee everywhere. Stop pouring.”
The guru says “You are like this mug. You are so full that I can not put any more knowledge into you. You must go empty your mug and then come back to me.”
Hope that helps.
Another way of saying this there is:
Do you have any examples of things you still do that you probably shouldn't? Curious to see what stuck around for you from those days.
Little things like forgetting the
strongtag exists in HTML and always usingbregardless of semantics, or using less useful ways to align items like floats and things because I was doing that before other options came along. I found myself using tables for way to much for way too long too!Some things were easier to shed than others, like using images for rounded corners. Those were easy to never look back on!
Thank CSS for Flex, Grid,
border-radius, and everything else!I call bullshit. I think I'm from the same "era" as you are. One of the reasons I frequent dev.to is to, kind of, get this perspective.
Most content is geared towards frontend-ers, especially web-frontend-ers (just to show my alleviated age). I have vested my background in tools and frameworks, especially backends.
I frequent the frontend newbie content, to kind-of keep up with what ever they introduce this time. Which is still quite a lot. But do I have bad habits? Not really.
I have some established habits, and I am learning new better habits. I started with
The only bad habit is to stay stuck in time with your mindset. Note, You do not have to keep up with everything.
*) I work on enterprise software where you ESR/LTS releases of browsers are "fancy". Usability trumps looks by an enormous distance. If I was working in a more consumer focused marked I would be looking at different things.
SAME (Geocities was amazing for the time)! bold vs strong, i vs em... I still remember when CSS came out and thinking it was AMAZING... and now I overuse divs and struggle to remember that semantic HTML is a lot more than just arias (article, aside, details... I had to look those up just to remember they are a thing). Fight the old-school fight daily!
I value less experienced engineers because of this. I might have seen 15 different ways that what you're building is going to become spaghetti 6 months from now, but I'll also see a tag, or a function form or something that I just didn't know existed in that code review too. It helps your whole team to be better when you have that mix of experience. I'll help with the structure (and it's important to explain so teammates aren't forced to learn by experience) but they will help with the syntax (and it's important to get the reasoning for using it so I can keep growing as a dev too).
I'm just here wondering why dev.to doesn't have a guestbook?? What kind of establishment is this?!
You kid, but that's a legit great idea.
Hey, it can either go really well or really wrong. xD
I worked with Geocities as well.
There will be a day when someone will write about 'bad habits from when I was writing those dinosaur React apps'. Nothing bad about it. As anyone can see, React is shiny, popular and a nice piece of tech. Just as Geocities was, back in 1990's.
Fast-forwarding 20 years won't make React a bad thing today. Just as fast-forwarding 20 years don't make Geocities something bad in the past.
I know it's not what you meant. Just wanted to get these thoughts out! 😉
I see what you are saying, and mostly agree (reason why I like to collaborate with a junior right now and be exposed to that kind of energy). But I've also seen juniors attaching onClick handlers to spans...
👨💻 gifcities.org/?q=coding
Though, sometimes, being the dinosaur can work for you...
(New to Platform Person): "Why do you use <X> construct in your code."
Me: "A couple decades worth of ingrained habit and I know that it works everywhere"
NtPP: "Ok. Mind if I use this newer method?"
Me: "Sure. If stuff works and lowers the amount of effort we have to expend, 'go for it'."
Me: "Remember when when you asked me why I used <X> construct and I said that 'I know that it works eveywhere'?"
NePP: "Yes...?"
Me: "Know that customer that was bitching about the tool you delivered?"
NtPP: "Yes...?"
Me: "Ironically, the fix for their problem was to use the method you originally questioned."
Bonus to those Geocities days: the first time I was faced with coding an HTML email, I didn't need to have the reliance on tables for layout explained to me at all 🤣
Viva la
table!I still have bad habits. Knowingly. I know there's a better way to do it. I'm too lazy to look it up. I'll go to my room with dinner.
Commodore 64. Those were the days. Oh yeah.
I was more of an Angelfire guy, but I feel ya. I do love Semantic html, and have started using elements like main, article, aside, section, figure, etc...
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