<story><title>Facts every web dev should know before they burn out and turn to painting</title><url>https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/100-things-every-web-developer-should-know/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hvasilev</author><text>The thing that burns out web developer is web development. The constant shift of technologies (just for the sake of it) and the nerfed (to oblivion) environment is hell. As a web developer, after you learn the basics (~5 years)  there is no feeling of where the &amp;quot;up&amp;quot; direction is. Everything feels like sidesteps. There is no feeling of permanence to your knowledge, unlike a lawyer or a doctor. The knowledge feels like water pouring into a full container - as much of it goes out, as it goes in.&lt;p&gt;Switched to embedded systems 7 years ago to avoid the burnout. It is better, in my opinion. Funny enough, there is a natural barrier to entry that keeps most programmers away - You have to understand how computers work, how operating systems work and you have to be able to code in C&amp;#x2F;assembly. I have a lot of fun and actually picked up electronics as a hobby, which will help me better myself professionally. I think there is enough here to keep me entertained until I retire.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hobofan</author><text>&amp;gt; There is no feeling of permanence to your knowledge&lt;p&gt;I couldn&amp;#x27;t disagree more. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s my situation as a full-stack web developer that makes it different, but over the past 5 years my understanding of all the layers that a website interaction goes through (from mouse click to database and back) has only deepened, and none of it feels like it went out of date over that timespan.&lt;p&gt;Sure some company may use technology X for the job another company uses Y, but overall it feels more like different paint jobs for the same thing with slightly different trade-offs, than an ever-changing barrage of completely new things.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facts every web dev should know before they burn out and turn to painting</title><url>https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/100-things-every-web-developer-should-know/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hvasilev</author><text>The thing that burns out web developer is web development. The constant shift of technologies (just for the sake of it) and the nerfed (to oblivion) environment is hell. As a web developer, after you learn the basics (~5 years)  there is no feeling of where the &amp;quot;up&amp;quot; direction is. Everything feels like sidesteps. There is no feeling of permanence to your knowledge, unlike a lawyer or a doctor. The knowledge feels like water pouring into a full container - as much of it goes out, as it goes in.&lt;p&gt;Switched to embedded systems 7 years ago to avoid the burnout. It is better, in my opinion. Funny enough, there is a natural barrier to entry that keeps most programmers away - You have to understand how computers work, how operating systems work and you have to be able to code in C&amp;#x2F;assembly. I have a lot of fun and actually picked up electronics as a hobby, which will help me better myself professionally. I think there is enough here to keep me entertained until I retire.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>seer</author><text>There’s a certain churn to it sure, but I wouldn’t call all the development “sidesteps” I think it’s  just the scope of changes that’s staggering. You knew jquery, gulp and express and you were fine, but thats such a low low bar if you take the whole of human achievement in CS. Web developers just re-experience the growth and invention of all the other branches. For example you get virtual dom with react - an idea that’s been in client side’s dev arsenal for quite a while. Webpack&amp;#x2F;esbuild are re-discovering compilers, etc.&lt;p&gt;It’s all just a process of convergence in my eyes. And if I put it in that way I can cope with it. Any new fancy library comes up - I check ok were have the ideas come from, language, environment etc. Go read that and understand the original concepts, and then watch the web dev slowly move in that direction.&lt;p&gt;To be honest it’s pace is sometimes actually frustratingly slow if anything. You can see some Ideas that have been tested and you think they would be great, but takes time to actually permeate into web dev.</text></comment>