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Discussion on: You shouldn't focus on learning JavaScript frameworks

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differentsmoke profile image
Pablo Barría Urenda

That just shouldn't be your main focus until you feel like you know the base languages well enough to write a web app from scratch.

I find the overall idea of learning the foundations vitally important for a healthy developer experience. However, I think one of the fundamentally misunderstood aspects of programming is that it is a craft more than a science.

You learn by doing, and frameworks help you do more with less, making it a more rewarding experience. They can also allow you to do useful stuff earlier on, which is key for motivation. Many concepts in programming can seem baffling until you experience them "in the wild". Higher level tools, of which frameworks are an example, can precipitate that.

To me, one of the key pedagogical benefits of computers is that they allow us to interact with complex models without having to understand them first. This is not at odds with foundational knowledge, but rather a key complement that will eventually ease its acquisition, since we can get "a feel" for things before we know them rigorously.

So I'm not saying you should start with frameworks, but delaying their incorporation until "you can write an app from scratch" seems like too late (of course, that depends on your definition of app).