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Discussion on: Four Reasons Why YOU Should Take the State of JavaScript Survey, Especially If You're a Beginner

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ingosteinke profile image
Ingo Steinke

So I'm probably the grumpy-old-webdev-will-become-shepherd-soon hoping that there really is a diverse young generation and that JS has a future beyond the React era.
Great post, great survey, thanks so much for your effort again!

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy ๐ŸŽ–๏ธ

I despair.

I give candidates a simple coding test, and the first thing most of them reach for... is React (even when it is totally inappropriate and over the top for the test). Then, when I tell them I want them to go old school and use plain JS, use actual form submission, and no tooling whatsoever - they fall apart. A good 50-60% of them are totally stumped - no clue.

Something has gone badly wrong

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darkwiiplayer profile image
๐’ŽWii ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€โšง๏ธ

You always read how people need to know the basics, and learning React & al. without knowing JS first is useless, so it's easy to believe that most beginners should know this and actually learn JS first, but somehow they still end up skipping that step despite every. single. post. (and/or tutorial) pointing this out.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy ๐ŸŽ–๏ธ

So, what do we think is wrong? Laziness? Impatience? Poor advice? Poor learning materials? All of the above?

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darkwiiplayer profile image
๐’ŽWii ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€โšง๏ธ

Probably a mix, though I don't think laziness plays as much of a role as impatience. Many people are probably just eager to learnt he technologies that they can be the most productive with and get a job quickly. Getting paid is nice, after all.

But I don't think that many beginners are intentionally ignoring the advise that they should learn to build stuff without high-level abstractions first; there must be some form of "dark matter" sending them on their way in the wrong direction.

Whether this is the fault of tutorials, boot camps, books, or just internet hype, I cannot tell. But I'd sure love to know what it is, if anybody eventually figures it out.

PS: At least we know it's not school teachers; most of those still think that table layouts are the way to go.

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sachagreif profile image
Sacha Greif

I would probably fail most coding tests since I haven't had to code up anything in vanilla JS in a long, long time. And to be honest I don't really see the point, if your job is going to involve using a framework then that's what you should be good at. As an example React doesn't involve any DOM manipulation so I'm pretty sure I would fail any task that requires remembering those APIs.