alt Hacker NewsThe discussion is centered around the idea that "adopting early" provides some future proofing in a rapidly evolving (and largely non-standard) terrain. I share the FA's position that it does not.
> The web is special in this sense, it's intentionally long-lived warts and all. So the fundamentals pay outsized dividends.
Fundamentals pay dividends, but what makes you think that what you learn as an early adopter are fundamentals? Fundamentals are knowledge that is deemed intemporal, not "just discovered".
The historical web and its simplicity are as available to anyone today as it was back then. People can still learn HTML today and make table-based layouts. HTML is still HTML, whether you learned it then or today. But if back then you intended to become a professional front-end developer, you would still have to contend with the tremendous difficulties that some seem to have forgotten out of nostalgia. You'd soon have to also learn CSS in its early and buggy drafts, then (mostly non-standard) JavaScript (Netscape and IE6) and the multiple browser bugs that required all kinds of hacks and shims. Then you'd have to keep up with the cycles of changing front-end tools and practices, as efforts to put some sense into the madness were moved there. Much in all that knowledge went nowhere since it was not always part of a progression, but rather a set of competing cycles.
Fundamentals are indisputably relevant, but they're knowledge that emerges as victorious after all the fluff of uncertainty has been left behind. Front-end development is only now settling into that phase. With LLMs we're still figuring out where we're going.
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Good points and thoughtful reply.
You're right, fundamentals are distilled, so to think they are free just by getting in early is likely backwards. And earning one's professional chops doesn't stop or start based on when you enter.
Web dev definitely is nostalgic. I miss the early days but I also conveniently erased ie6, binding data to HTML, the need for backbone and jQuery to do anything. hmmm yeah doesn't matter when you start, it's all a grind if you dig deep enough.
This sounds exactly right. I'm someone who learned the web back when IE6 was something we wished everyone was on, and also someone who learned the fundamentals of the web and CS in general enough to try writing a book about it to teach everyone else.
Picking up the web early didn't help with the latter. I spent most of my early time memorizing tips and tricks that only applied to old browsers. I didn't pick up the fundamentals till I went back to school for CS and took a networking class.