In my team, I'm the one that knows JavaScript the best. Everyone is asking for a help and I'm happy to answer.
Anyway, I somehow have this feeling that JavaScript is 2nd-level language and I'm not so proud that I'm the only one that knows it good enough. I would be much prouder if I would be "The Python guy" or, hell, let it be "The PHP guy" even...
I much prefer to be the JavaScript guy than the PHP guy. JavaScript does have some pitfalls, but they're easy to avoid. JavaScript is way cleaner and better thought out than PHP. Python is still very small. The two big "enterprisey" languages C# and Java are ubiquitous and are hard to excel in.
I'm a .NET developer, but I often find myself working with front-end code because I know it fairly well. I also find myself being the main person to write JavaScript.
Don't get me wrong, I like being good at something and I'll keep working at it to become better, but I find JS to be so annoying at times! I feel that I'm only good with it because I've taken the time to read about it, and because I'm able to take lessons from writing back-end code and apply what seem to be obvious lessons to writing JS (i.e. cache jQuery lookups, name functions to aid stack traces, etc). The reason I learned to write JS well was because the overuse of JS annoys me so much, especially when no legacy brower fallback is provided, or when the overuse of plugins causes the page size to be huge.
What's even more annoying is that ever since LinkedIn added those stupid endorsements my main endorsement by far is JavaScript! Now, potential employers will view me as good with JavaScript over anything else.
JS is a good thing to know, but sometimes a part of me dies when I'm referred to as "the best with JS". I'd prefer to be "the best with C#", or "the best with Python", but I'll take what I can get.
Your answer can always be: Do what you can to keep me around..:)
On a more serious note, working with newer JS frameworks you'll always run into the issue of long term maintenance. Why do I pick jQuery (most of the time) for projects that I won't solely maintain? It's easy to hire for, it has a big enough community to support and there are a decent number of developers that know jquery (and/or can easily go from JS->jquery). I would try to move some items to jquery-like functionality as you go from prototype to production.
It's indeed not wise to use technologies only one employee knows. The best way is to chose technologies together and find developers who want to learn those. You have to motivate your colleagues to jump on board. And tell the senior developer websites will be more and more depending on JavaScript. It's not 2000 anymore.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 24.3 ms ] threadAnyway, I somehow have this feeling that JavaScript is 2nd-level language and I'm not so proud that I'm the only one that knows it good enough. I would be much prouder if I would be "The Python guy" or, hell, let it be "The PHP guy" even...
I'm a .NET developer, but I often find myself working with front-end code because I know it fairly well. I also find myself being the main person to write JavaScript.
Don't get me wrong, I like being good at something and I'll keep working at it to become better, but I find JS to be so annoying at times! I feel that I'm only good with it because I've taken the time to read about it, and because I'm able to take lessons from writing back-end code and apply what seem to be obvious lessons to writing JS (i.e. cache jQuery lookups, name functions to aid stack traces, etc). The reason I learned to write JS well was because the overuse of JS annoys me so much, especially when no legacy brower fallback is provided, or when the overuse of plugins causes the page size to be huge.
What's even more annoying is that ever since LinkedIn added those stupid endorsements my main endorsement by far is JavaScript! Now, potential employers will view me as good with JavaScript over anything else.
JS is a good thing to know, but sometimes a part of me dies when I'm referred to as "the best with JS". I'd prefer to be "the best with C#", or "the best with Python", but I'll take what I can get.
On a more serious note, working with newer JS frameworks you'll always run into the issue of long term maintenance. Why do I pick jQuery (most of the time) for projects that I won't solely maintain? It's easy to hire for, it has a big enough community to support and there are a decent number of developers that know jquery (and/or can easily go from JS->jquery). I would try to move some items to jquery-like functionality as you go from prototype to production.