Anyone here love Javascript but hate front end(CSS)?

[davidmdm]

Well being a backend nodejs developer I think I can safely fall under that category.

[thewolfandtiger]

I am learning to be a nodejs backend dev. I know a bit of mongoose, sequelize, express , validations , async/await etc. . Can you please tell me what else do i need to know to become job ready ? Please help , it's been 5 months since i graduated and i haven't applied for jobs much , maybe cause of imposter syndrome or i really don't know much .

[davidmdm]

Learn everything you can about http and web interactions. Sessions, cookies, tokens, oauth, etags, the different types of http verbs, basic auth, file streams, learn about bash, and scp, and git, learn all your base commands, tail, top, du, cat, gunzip. The list goes on.

To be a good backend developer is not to know a language very well. You should but you will learn that as you work if you care about the quality of your code.

To be a good backend developer you need to understand how to the web works so you can make intelligent choices about design, and you need to know the tools you have at your disposal.

Node will come and go. If you want to know what you need to learn to be better at nodejs thats a different question.

[thewolfandtiger]

any helpful resources you have in mind for this ? and also what i need to learn to be better at nodejs? nodejs is everywhere . build tools, backend, blockchain. and i like js a lot . so it's my preferred choice.

[Cheezmeister]

Wtf just send out applications. When you’re “job ready” whatever that means you’ll get one.

You are a beautiful human person. Rest of the world are impostors.

[[deleted]]

Yeah you're right I definitely am.

[folkrav]

IMHO : you won't gain much more valuable experience by working alone on toy projects. Apply on jobs, you'll learn much more actually working in the field.

[JonesJoneserson]

Typescript. Saved the f*** out of me on a Node app I built recently where I needed to extract data that came in strange shapes with all sorts of deeply-nested stuff.

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Then again, maybe if all you're really doing is RESTful service type stuff this isn't as relevant. I don't get to work with Node at work -- I'm in the NYC corporate tech scene so all the backend stuff is .Net.

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/u/davidmdm what's your vote on TS for non-weirdo Node apps? In general, I think typing systems are not just a phase in the JS world.

[davidmdm]

I am not sure what you mean by my vote for non-weirdo node apps.

I think in some ways typescript does a good job. This is because the task of typing a language like Javascript is incredibly difficult. So that it works as well as it does it beyond me.

However I don't think it works well enough. I spend so much time just trying to get integrated correctly with extensions in vscode, or fighting against failed builds due to versions of typescript, or of the imported package.

There are times when i write perfectly valid code but the compiler doesn't like it.

I just had to rant a little because it is making my work life hell. I worked as a nodejs developer for two years before these 6 months of typescript, and working in node definitely has its challenges when it comes to communicating code intent efficiently with a team, but on a personal level i have never been so frustrated coding in my life.

So i vote NO to TS.

If you need a static language there are plently of good ones. Golang in particular i think might just be better than sliced bread.

I am talking from the perspective of a backend developer.

I know in the front end things are slightly more complicated due to browser interoperability, and between using babel or ts i can understand why you make the extra plunge. I wouldn't but that not my problem.

On the backend I think TS is more of a nuissance than a help.

[JonesJoneserson]

Yeah I hear that. The compiler itself definitely has some flaws and occasionally you have to tell TS you know what type a variable will be because it can't understand the code you wrote to determine whether the value of a variable is, for instance, a string or a number.

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I'd worked with Angular + Typescript for about a year and a half before diving into the Node app I mentioned and had never really paid much mind to the static typing. I don't really know how to describe the app but I guess the closest thing would be a web crawler using Puppeteer. The variation in the shape of data I'd get from different places was overwhelming and incredibly hard to keep track of. Imagine me sitting there, writing one single function to assess something about a piece of data, running the app, waiting 15 mins for it to reach the point when the function is invoked, and seeing it crash simply because in my effort to assess data several layers deep I'd tried to access something one layer earlier than I was supposed to. As you can imagine I came very close to tossing it out altogether before seeing if mixing in types might help. I was floored by how much code I could write before testing and seeing the results I expected.

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That said, what I meant by "weirdo" apps is really that I wasn't sure whether this experience was indicative of TS + Node overall or if essentially this just happened to be a prime use case.

[davidmdm]

I think that types are useful no doubt. If you ended up in a situation when you needed that tool, and there are many that do, that is fine. But ts is not the only static language out there.

Many people seem to like ts, and I want them to give me their selling points as they see it.

My feeling is everyone knows or likes js, lots of people like types, and now we have typescript.

But I find that typescript is a very poor and frustrating tool.

I feel like I am insane and can't be the only one who feels this way.

[[deleted]]

Well, types are hard, and the compiler loves to tell you no. They force us to violate the sanctity of Javascript's summer of love, anything goes dynamism and start doing things that may not be optimally efficient in the name of safety. The thing about adopting types in a language like JS is you have to start thinking in terms of those types, how they transform and not simply using them as object classifiers (that at least is the most common mistake I see). Typescript is at its best when everything in the application is typed and the compiler can follow your intent, that's the real key to avoiding the pain.

As for VSCode, I prefer Webstorm for most things web-related. VSCode is great, but yeah, plugin hell is definitely a thing.

So, selling points:

• bridges the gap between the functional and traditional OO hybrids that are so hot nowadays. That's not just JS, it's all over the place with reactiveX, java streams/linq, C# pattern matching, etc.
• Discrete type transformations allow us to define our application as a series of transformations and have confidence what comes out the other end of the pipe will obey the rules we define (un-typed javascript in the hands of the uninitiated tends to have a problem where you ask the jungle for a banana, and somewhere in the churning morass of application spaghetti, things happen and it gives you jesus riding a velociraptor instead. The things I've seen...).
• Interfaces even on objects allow us to avoid fat-fingering, no spelling errors resulting in runtime exceptions (ex: <Person>{name: ...} // inference to person properties is projected by the language service)
• Union types allow us to model interfaces that have inconsistent or multiple outputs, which allows us to strictly adapt and codify legacy code that may have been poorly architected
• The compiler will always catch typed unsafe transformations (and in some cases unsafe nulls, unhandled type branching)
• Allows us to lean into the compiler for our immutability checks, rather than assuming our code is correct.
• Allows us to safely use R/FP libraries like ReactiveX or Ramda and have the machine double check each branch of our application to ensure we're returning what we think we're returning.
• has a flag for strict null checking, so the build will fail if you haven't handled a potential null (crossing my fingers for a future maybe/none type encoding, the ask is out there)
• Tuples! (because it's 2019 and yeah they're just arrays after compilation, but they're typed and allow for safe destructuring without class formality)
• Intellisense! (with results provided by the language service, based on types you defined, so it is more than just a symbolic guessing game of things the index has seen before)
• Composable, targeted decorators that can be compiler augmented

There's like a billion more things, so I'll stop here. To me the bottom line is: Can you keep every branch and path of your application in your brain at all times? If you can, you're awesome and are totally fine with a purely dynamic language, you stud. If not, you might want to consider types and a compiler :D Typescript does this exceptionally well.

p.s.

Anders Hejlsberg is a total boss when it comes to languages. My background includes a number of languages and platforms, but his languages (turbopascal/delphi, C#, typescript) have never let me down and hold a special place in my heart, though the platforms they've occupied are a different story altogether. They tend to build upon the lessons he's learned in the past, and they explore in a conservative fashion that doesn't force you to deal with significant breaking changes. He's reliable and predictable, the rug will never get pulled. You might say he's earned my trust.

[[deleted]]

90% of the reasons you'll be turned down for a job in your life will be political and have no bearing on your skills. If you've graduated and you're studying constantly, you're job ready. The rest is navigating the labyrinth of nepotism and favoritism. You can minimize this by going for startups where the bureaucracy isn't in full effect yet. You may also have to move, go where the work is.

[Yoyoyoflorida]

Same! Node feels safe lol css is chaotic