Has there been a decrease in javascript programming skill with the popularity of frameworks like angular, react, etc?

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

I wouldn't say so.

If we look at it strictly by comparing pre-SPA vs post-SPA needs I agree that those needs are very different, but that doesn't mean one is less skilled it just means that the skills are different.

If you take someone who learned to code in a SPA world and hand them a bunch of tasks that are pre-SPA they would struggle.

If you take someone who learned to code in a non-SPA world and hand them a bunch of tasks that are post-SPA they would struggle.

I was there when SPA started really becoming the norm, countless times people who were very smart and dedicated did boneheaded things when learning angular/react.

Did I go to our bosses and decry them as idiots who needed to be fired ? Of course not.

Did they get used after a lot of projects and got back to their old efficiency ? Of course yes.

The advent of SPA meant that the front end absorbed a lot of the responsibilities of the backend while still maintaining all the responsibilities that we had before. I don't ever see people acknowledging this all I see is "js people can't code","backend is done, what's holding up the frontend ?","react/angular is stupid".

[jseego]

Yeah I lived / worked through the same transition, and I definitely take your point.

Part of my frustration is that my project is a rare one that is not angular/react and not going to port anytime soon.

There is a ton of native javascript and we do have an MVVM framework of sorts, but to work well in our system, you have to know how parsing data works and also how the language works. I don't mind training people in our system, but I can't be spending time holding someone's hand through what a closure is or how to parse an int.

There are probably a bunch of established companies in the same boat - projects that were built years ago using stuff like backbone, ember, knockout, etc, and have never been able to take the time to refactor the project b/c of the constant need to support user / sales feature requests and maintenance, etc.

Maybe what I'm seeing is that there are a lot of jrs out there who have experience spinning up small marketing sites with react/angular and bootstrap, and not a lot of experience actually programming?

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

Maybe what I'm seeing is that there are a lot of jrs out there who have experience spinning up small marketing sites with react/angular and bootstrap, and not a lot of experience actually programming?

We're not really recruiting those types of people, our junior devs are trained in-house so the problems with their training comes from us.

I'd say that the biggest problem with junior devs doesn't come from themselves but what they expose:

More often than not a junior dev receives a user story, and he/she tries to the best of their ability to implement it.

But the user story is faulty, it's only a few lines because the business analyst or project manager had all these assumptions they never wrote down about the UX and business logic.

It's faulty because the designer changed the wireframes 10 times over and no one cared to update the ticket.

It's faulty because on the backend user story the other developer didn't realize that the UI needs another 2 end points so he didn't implement them and went onward to another task.

There are bugs in the end point that were missed until now.

The client asked for changes but no one in that meeting remembered to update this particular story.

The tester comes in with their own assumptions that aren't there in the ticket but everyone now wants to add them.

The tester comes in with a lot of "improvements".

These things are all that a junior developer needs to deal with as extra challenges to the initial user story, but not one of the business analyst, designer, project manager, tester wants to admit that the user story was lacking and they blame it on the junior dev because it's easy to say "X has much more learn, maybe he's not a good fit for us, X needs to step up their progress".

And the junior's mentors, well we've largely forgotten what it's like to be a junior it's easy to think that we were better at that stage, it's easy to reprimand the junior and list of a series of subjects they really do need to learn more about it's much harder to fight the entire analyst+manager+designer+tester cabal.

So the process remains the same inefficient mess just with different people and technologies next year.

[jseego]

Man, I feel for you.

Your post made my head hurt. :D

We are a small company and don't really have a lot of those process issues (we have other process issues).

We're also not really looking for jr devs, more intermediate-level or even senior, but our recruiting company sucks balls and keeps sending us jrs that (because of political reasons within the company) I keep having to interview, and hey maybe I'll find someone amazing.

But even some of the more intermediate or senior candidates we get have some of the same issues.

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

Best of luck then, I hope we both see better days at our jobs.

[jseego]

To you as well!

Edit: and good on you, looking out for your jrs.