Ask HN: Best way to become a front end developer?

3 points by curiousjorge ↗ HN
Okay I just read this great guide that was written for jQuery fanboys on why React.js is superior and I'm sold!

http://reactfordesigners.com/labs/reactjs-introduction-for-people-who-know-just-enough-jquery-to-get-by/

Part of my growing horror is the 4k line of jQuery + javascript mashup it's harder and harder to make changes and I just get plain lost on how I can add another developer without incurring huge costs.

anyways I want to get started I have dealt with meteor.js so I'm interested to know how flux or reflux.js seems to fit in with react.js

I'm also going to need some guide to get a huge array of acronyms and tools like bower, SASS (not SaaS), LESS and all these arguments about io.js, node.js.

1 comment

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> on why React.js is superior and I'm sold

That's a one way road to disaster. Not because of React (React is a good tool) but because you get sold to hype that easily.

- Easily succumbing to hype makes you think everything moves very fast.

- When thinking things move very fast, you think you're slow.

- When you think you're slow, you then think you're behind.

- When you think you're behind, you give up.

The web scene is a very fast and very unforgiving platform. The right thing today, might be the worst mistake tomorrow (like Crockford having wanted Object.create, but now despises it).

> Part of my growing horror is the 4k line of jQuery + javascript mashup it's harder and harder to make changes and I just get plain lost on how I can add another developer without incurring huge costs.

Learn dependency management and split up your code. There's a lot of implementations, as well as the standard ES6 modules. 4k is nothing to the horrors I have gone through.

> anyways I want to get started I have dealt with meteor.js

Oh, you know meteor? Why not stick to it? It's, IMO, the fastest way to prototype apps when you already know JS. Why not master it?

> I'm interested to know how flux or reflux.js seems to fit in with react.js

You don't really need React with Flux. In fact, I have used the Flux pattern on several different frameworks, even Angular and just Vanilla JS.

> I'm also going to need some guide to get a huge array of acronyms and tools like bower, SASS (not SaaS), LESS and all these arguments about io.js, node.js.

Stick to one that's used commonly. Again, don't be hype-driven. Just take your pace.