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Discussion on: If I don't use React, am I still a developer?

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

I'm with you on the React stuff. I work mainly back-end but sit next to React developers, and looking at what they do is... annoyingly daunting. I think it's because a lot of modern javascript is as terse as possible, and I think that's driven by a culture of wanting to be seen as clever, and that it's a Bad Thing for Everybody.

I mean, I know terse, I used to be a Perl programmer for crying out loud, but as I get older I find myself wanting everything to be clearer and closer to human-speak. It's like when people say they've made something as a "one-liner" which is really a bunch of semicolon-separated ternaries with variable names like a and b. Very clever, have a biscuit, don't bring that stuff anywhere near my codebase.

Going back to the title... well, React isn't ubiquitous. It's, am I an artist if I don't use acrylics?, not am I a painter if I don't paint?

I find myself saying I'm going to learn something in my spare time and then spending that time watching TV instead. I don't feel bad about it. I keep up with the things that interest me, and that might be a new framework or language and it might be the characters in Game of Thrones. I only have so many bytes of brain left, and I have to prioritise.

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mikolaj_kubera profile image
Mikolaj Kubera

Lot's of things I agree here, especially the "one-liner" and using your spare time to just unload.

One thing I'm really curious about, though, is this:
"I mean, I know terse, I used to be a Perl programmer for crying out loud, but as I get older I find myself wanting everything to be clearer and closer to human-speak."

What "human-speak" language(s) do you use? :-) Or which one(s) do you consider "human-speak"?

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

Probably Python (which I used to use ages ago and picked up again recently for Advent Of Code).
The zen of Python defines a lot of that as things like "Explicit is better than implicit, simple is better than complex." and its whitespace requirements force people to write short, clear code.

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david_j_eddy profile image
David J Eddy

"... I think that's driven by a culture of wanting to be seen as clever, and that it's a Bad Thing for Everybody..."

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