Linked by David Adams on Fri 11th Jul 2008 02:59 UTC, submitted by snydeq
Neil McAllister raises questions regarding Web development skills in an era of constant innovation. Sure, low barriers to entry give underdog technologies ample opportunity to thrive without the backing of name-brand vendors. But doesn't this fragmentation of the Web development market put undue pressure on developers to specialize? The result is a crisis, McAllister concludes, one in which maintaining a marketable skill set and hiring for a particular Web project gets more difficult as the state of the art changes on an almost daily basis.
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Member since:2005-07-05
Member since:2005-07-05
One other comment...
While I agree with you that a Sharepoint programmer is probably worth a bag of cotton candy (maybe even a big bag), or a half-melted ice cream cone melting down a child's hand (maybe even a double-scooper), if that's all they know, I don't agree that Ruby on Rails programmers fit in this group for a variety of reasons.
The main reason is this: Ruby on Rails developers know an important design pattern; MVC. Ruby on Rails is fairly slow, but it encourages some excellent programming practices, whereas web languages like Java and the .NET framework don't. In fact, I think VisualStudio encourages some fairly poor development practices, to be honest.
RE[2]: Be conservative
by modmans2ndcoming on Fri 11th Jul 2008 21:51
in reply to "RE: Be conservative"
Member since:2005-11-09
RE[2]: Be conservative
by StephenBeDoper on Fri 11th Jul 2008 23:16
in reply to "RE: Be conservative"
Member since:2005-07-06
The main reason is this: Ruby on Rails developers know an important design pattern; MVC.
That's certainly useful, but it doesn't guarantee that a developer can apply those principles beyond the specific framework they're familiar with.
Or put another way, the important question (IMO) is: can a developer adhere to good practices even if he's not working within a framework those which enforces those practices?
Personally, if I'm hesitant to work with anyone who is only capable of doing their job using a specific set of tools - proficiency is good, utter dependency is not.
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Member since:
2005-11-18
I think that, except if you need to ride the edge (e.g. if you are a "Web 2.0" company), it's best to be conservative and stay with what is proven to work well.
Hire programmers that master "stable languages" well, e.g. C/C++, Python, and Java. They can write higher level code and optimize it where necessary. They're probably going to be more useful than "Rails programmers" or "Sharepoint programmers".
Slowly, there are also winners emerging from previous "framework wars". While they may not be as conservative as writing code in PHP, or coding up a full web app by hand, they do provide a lot more productivity and provide useful abstractions. For instance, frameworks like Django seem up to the task.
It's great if a new framework shows you how to code a bookstore in a five minute screencast. But is it bug-free, does it perform well, is the API mostly frozen, will it be properly maintained in 5 years? Those are things that are going to count when you go are going further than a simple book store app.
Edited 2008-07-11 09:01 UTC