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What are some misconceptions about web development?

Ben Halpern on June 20, 2020

When people think "web development", what do they get wrong?

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buinauskas profile image
Evaldas Buinauskas

According to my mom, I'm installing Windows. 🤷‍♂️

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stephanie profile image
Stephanie Handsteiner

According to everyone: I can fix printers.

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jrop profile image
Jonathan Apodaca

This. 1000 times this.

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alessandrojcm profile image
Alessandro Cuppari

According to everyone, I can fix their computers. If only they knew I can barely fix mine when it fails.

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

I expect everyone to be at least electrical engineer and devops. I don't care about your coding.

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vaibhavkhulbe profile image
Vaibhav Khulbe • Edited

I feel some recruiters think if they're hiring a web developer, they must be good at that AND:

  • Mobile app development
  • DevOps
  • Design (for full-stack web dev mostly)
  • And God knows what else! 🤷‍♂️

I sincerely think they're in a great misconception. Come on man, I'm good at web dev that's why I want to _dev_elop a _web_site! I'm not good at Kubernetes!

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shaijut profile image
Shaiju T

:) But I think this is the Job of Full Stack Developer. Isn't ?

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Scott Yeatts • Edited

Yes, but also to varying degrees. I started in FE, but I'm also very comfortable building a backend codebase. I'm weaker with DB and devops.

Don't get me wrong, I can stand-up a DB and deploy kubernetes containers, but when you get into the deep understanding issues I lean on my teammates that have devoted more time to those disciplines.

Full Stack doesn't mean "knows everything at an advanced level" it just means you can be productive and contribute at any level (while knowing when to call for backup and not spinning your wheels when someone else could help you get there faster)

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vaibhavkhulbe profile image
Vaibhav Khulbe

Full Stack doesn't mean "knows everything at an advanced level" it just means you can be productive and contribute at any level

Highly agree with this. Thanks for your input :)

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jgusta profile image
jgusta

I’m going to use this phrase instead of full stack :)

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vaibhavkhulbe profile image
Vaibhav Khulbe

Well, for me as a front-end dev, all of those skills just doesn't make sense!

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Micah Lindley

That's what I originally thought about backend technologies. However, as I move into increasingly difficult frontend topics I've learned that having experience in Node, NPM, custom APIs, and other server-side is extremely beneficial.

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Adrian Bece

Before I started working with React, I was an ecommerce (Magento) frontend developer. At the time, when I was trying to explain frontend development to a person that doesn't know much about programming, it usually went like this.

Person: "So what is it that you do at your job?"


Me: "I develop websites, I turn design into code and make sure everything looks, and sometimes function, as expected.


Person: "So you're a designer, then?"

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tina

When I was working at an ecommerce company, my relatives were convinced it was Amazon. The concept that there are Amazon-like online shops out there were a bit too hard to grasp ;)

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

Basically another version of the typical

A: "So what do you do?"

B: "I'm a programmer"

A: "Oh, so you fix computers and stuff?"

B: "No, I... uh... just forget it."

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Adrian Bece

Something similar happened to me with an older neighbour.

A: "So what do you do?"

B: "I'm a programmer"

A: "Oh great! Can you fix my TV?"

That was back when CRT TVs were still a thing.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

It's not like I blame people for it, but it does make me wonder why nobody cares what programemrs really do yet I don't exactly see many people asking a carpenter to fix their car.

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Saswata Mukherjee

HTML & CSS are not programming languages. Also frontend is easy and not time consuming.

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Victor Barbu

They are not programming languages. Front end is easy as long as it’s not too complex. After that, it becomes a challenge indeed.

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Peter Harrison

HTML is a markup language. Javascript is a full on language. There was a time when front end development was second class, but today there is no real distinction between front end and back end in terms of skillsets.

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fluffynuts profile image
Davyd McColl

They are all programming languages. Some are declarative, some are imperative. A declarative language like CSS doesn't make it "less than" or not "full on".

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Peter Harrison

I didn't say CSS is less than. It has its function as a cascading style sheet in the context of HTML. HTML itself is a markup system for content, even if ironically the content these days is delivered through REST API more often than not. Front end development usually involves some kind of framework like Angular, Vue, or React. Each technology has its place. However, if you only know HTML and CSS I don't know how you would fare in a modern web application development environment.

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Christopher

I'm currently trying to self teach myself and if you wouldn't mind answering a beginner's question, what should I learn besides HTML and CSS? I had planned JS as my third lesson.

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fluffynuts profile image
Davyd McColl

JS is a good place to go next! You'll be able to use it almost immediately with the HTML/CSS knowledge you have, and, in addition, you'll be able to start doing back-end stuff on Node. If possible, get going with TypeScript -- there's a little extra overhead, but it will (a) help you to make fewer mistakes and (b) set you up for Angular or React (and you can use it effectively with Vue too, and on the backend!)

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Dave Jacoby

Just dropping into add that you can solve FizzBuzz with just HTML and CSS.

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guitarino profile image
Kirill Shestakov

If your definition of a programming language is "structured text which represents machine instructions", then, yes, HTML and CSS are programming languages. But, instead of imperatively saying "add an element X to parent Y", it's written declaratively as <Y><X></X></Y>. And, since there's no branching instructions in HTML, it's not turning complete.

Funny enough, under the same definition, markdown is also considered a programming language, meaning I just wrote a little program 🙂

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Martin Ninov

And if my grandma had wheels she would have been a bike.

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Ashley Sheridan

HTML & CSS aren't programming languages. They're computer languages, but not programming languages.

Same with things like JSON, markdown, etc. They're no less valuable for that, and the web wouldn't be the web without them.

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Vadzim Papou • Edited

Yes - they aren't. To reduce misunderstanding you could translate what these acronyms stand for.

Hyper Text Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheet
Where did you see programming language here?

If they are programming languages then please show me how you will implement factorial algorithm with only HTML and CSS and I will agree with you.

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pris_stratton profile image
pris stratton • Edited

I came on to say “CSS is easy”.

I find it harder than learning Haskell or C 😀

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𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

CSS is extremely difficult, specially to programmers, because it's a completely different way of thinking. At the same time, it's an extremely elegant language and I wish more programming languages had that same level of elegance.

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pris stratton

What makes it a different way of thinking, the declarative nature of the language? Think that’s the right term.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

Not only that, but also the non-linear aspect, I'd say.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

HTML and CSS are not programming languages. Front end is, however, just as time consuming as back-end.

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Rohith Gilla

When I say I am a web developer my little cousin thinks I am a spider man 🕸

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madza profile image
Madza • Edited

When you start to catch up on all the JS frameworks, your cousin actually turns right :)

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

web developer !== web emitter

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sergix profile image
Peyton McGinnis • Edited

"So... I hear you write websites. Can you make me an app?"

People always assume, at least in my cases, that web development = native app development...

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Rohit Prasad

Well, if you know React you can say Yes :)

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Basti Ortiz

"Sooo... you can hack a Facebook account, right?"

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hj profile image
Hemant Joshi • Edited

Googling is most important skill to have and it really is❤️

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Adam Crockett 🌀

I wasn't hired, Google was hired.

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hj profile image
Hemant Joshi

this surely made my day

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

Its not completely true, I am an experienced googler 🤣

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hj profile image
Hemant Joshi

Bro you need to stop, or I will stop learning Node and react!

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀 • Edited

No please don't stop on my account, truth is I have been doing this a long time and I couldn't remember it all, there is just no way, but I can remember the topic or the right questions (the secret of success in programming, ask the computer the right question), so I use Google as it is a tool to get such answers, you as a programmer are expected to use the right tools for the job, brains often degrade over time.

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hj profile image
Hemant Joshi

❤️❤️❤️

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Felicity Ratcliffe (she/her)

This is absolutely true! :)

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hj profile image
Hemant Joshi

lol

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Panda Quests

But it is.

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Muhimen

I know HTML, time to hack NASA

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Farhan Hasin Chowdhury

People often treat web application development as something inferior to making desktop software or mobile application.

I honestly don't know why.

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Panda Quests

Yeah. I think it used to be like that. But nowadays it is just as complex as backend development

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Tulsi Prasad

That it is taught in college. Bye. 👋

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Ben Halpern

It’s weird that the web has been around for a million years and colleges still treat it like a passing fad.

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Aniket • Edited

Honestly, most courses that are taught in computer science courses are more or less of no use at all. I think the only relevant ones I was taught at my college were ds/algo and databases, which were very basic themselves (only oracle SQL server in DB. Nothing about scaling, NRDBMS, heck not even some other RDBMS like postgres .) I wish we were taught so much more, but for now, college looks like a necessary hurdle you have to jump through to even get a job and nothing more ( in my country at least )

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Michiel Hendriks

Weird, when I did some database/RDBMS courses at the university almost 20 years ago we used PostgreSQL. Reasons:

  1. Gratis
  2. Most SQL standard conforming RDBMS
  3. Extensive featureset

So it was basically the most neutral RDBMS out there, and still is. It was about understanding SQL and RDBMS concepts, not learning Oracle, Sybase, or even PostgreSQL specifically.

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Tulsi Prasad

Yeah, I agree and also I think we're just in college for around 3-4 years but our career spans like for decades and we never can depend just on this couple years of college to know every thing in the industry. So, we always have to self teach ourselves.

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Lou (🚀 Open Up The Cloud ☁️) • Edited

Hrm, I graduated in 2014 and studied modern web development at the time, JavaScript, JQuery and CSS, LAMP stack were all covered alongside typical computer science topics. My university is top <10 in the UK.

That said, this is only my anecdotal experience, my opinion is also too that universities are considerably less vocational than other options, but the debate is still relevant: should they be?

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Peyton McGinnis • Edited

I agree. It's so strange how many universities only focus on OOP, systems programming, etc (which are very important) but barely paying any attention to the massive shift to the web in software development. It's not like it's anything new.

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Kevin Pennekamp

HTML & CSS are not programming languages

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Galuh Utama • Edited

HTML itself is not turing complete. So it’s technically not a programming language. BUT when you mix CSS AND HTML they can be arguably turing complete.

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wayofthepie • Edited

I've never understood this argument. Where did the idea a programming language has to be turing complete to be a programming language, come from 😄

A good example is agda. Agda is a total language, its functions always terminate and cannot return a value other than the type specified. This property makes it non-turing complete.

I would still call it a programming language. There are many other examples.

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vyckes profile image
Kevin Pennekamp

Agreed. I mean, even Pokemon Yellow is tiring complete

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ludamillion profile image
Luke Inglis

I think Turing completeness is more important when determining if a language is a ‘general’ programming language as opposed to domain specific languages.

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Adam Crockett 🌀

CSS especially, computations and variables and a limited form of logic.

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Basti Ortiz

This right here hits the spot.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️ • Edited

What you do with HTML and CSS is not programming, thus they are not programming languages.

Otherwise, as some have pointed out, markdown is also a programming language.

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elmuerte profile image
Michiel Hendriks

They're not, and I don't see why that even matters. C++ isn't a natural language. Assembly isn't a markup language. French isn't a formal language. Cuneiform isn't a spoken language.

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Holy-Elie Scaïde

Can't be a programmer if you don't know a programming language.

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elmuerte profile image
Michiel Hendriks

So? Not every websites needs to be programmed. Plenty of people spend quite some effort to program tools which you can use to develop a website, without programming.
And there's a difference between developing the CMS and developing the layout and styling.

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skydevht profile image
Holy-Elie Scaïde

I'm not saying it's bad. Just that people want the title of the programmer as soon as they learn HTML and it rubs them the wrong way when you say that HTML is not a real programming language.

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ludamillion profile image
Luke Inglis

Hence web developer 😉

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jcs224 profile image
Joe Sweeney

"So, that means you can fix my printer, right?"

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Adam Crockett 🌀

Sigh, I often do...

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Osinachi Chukwujama

Web development is the core of software engineering

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Ian Pride • Edited

Please explain what you mean for me. I started learning programming 20+ years ago from reading library books and a computer that had no internet for like the first year I had it. I got lucky to have the computer in the first place, but the web was even rarer and only suburban people could afford it and web development was just barely out of it's infancy. Even today where there are web apps everywhere there are exponentially more desktop apps. Most of the software I write and use has nothing to do with the web and even though, yes, I use the web to do research for software development; it's rare it has anything to do with it. I personally refuse to use web apps for things that have nothing to do with the web unless I have no other choice and it's something for legal or responsibility things. I try to open a browser as little as possible with the exception of research and a small amount of time daily I allot myself for free time.
If anything software engineering is at the core of web development, not the other way around.
This was not a rhetorical question, I really want to know what you mean as I can't fathom what it might be.

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jrop profile image
Jonathan Apodaca

That "front-end" is easier than "back-end".

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𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️ • Edited

That "front-end" is "front-end". Like, seriously, if you're managing application state, you're writing back-end code, even if it runs in the browser.

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Bernard Baker

The main misconception I recall was when I said "I'm a web developer..." The response was "Oh... You make websites". But you can't see their eye's looking for an exit. #boring #whereisthebar

So generally, a lack of interest.

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fullstackcoder • Edited

I'm really bothered from those to believe that the front-end is just some HTML/javascript and there is no complexity in this. Believe me, there are many of them out there.

I'm a full-stack engineer, I've been to both sides. Front-end is equaly important to the back-end and over the time, more and more business logic is passing from back to the front (Graphql for example).

A lot can be written here but I will not go any further. Good topic for discussion though!

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guitarino profile image
Kirill Shestakov

That web dev is lesser / bigger than other kinds of development. Other developers often look down on web devs, thinking "oh, it's all just stupid CRUD, wait till you get interesting applications". First of all, no, it's not all CRUD. Front-end and back-end have all kinds of complex moving parts, one of which is CRUD. Secondly, web development is made of the same kinds of things as other development: conditional statements, loops, assignment, math, function calls, classes. They're the same thing. Thirdly, you can think of many, many systems as a sort of a CRUD, not related to web dev, e.g. the way drivers work can be thought of as simply writing to a certain memory region, i.e. doing a sort of a CRUD on this region.

I think there's different priorities for web dev, but it's because it's web dev rather than anything else, and this difference doesn't make it any lesser / bigger than other development.

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Alan Dávalos

"You need a framework for every project."
"Learning x framework before learning actual JS"
"Defaulting to JS for things that can be done with just HTML/CSS"

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oohsinan profile image
Omar Sinan

That UI/UX aren’t as important 🤦‍♂️

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

That complex code is better and you are better by making complex things.

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jacobmgevans profile image
Jacob Evans

TL;DR It's easy.
Commonly hear it's easier than "X", I usually respond with well you do this then and I'll do your thing instead... I especially hear easier compared to other development... I've done various things in my life (outside of tech too), it's all hard especially if you care about improving your skills and doing it right.

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NaftoliOst • Edited

"I need to change the 'time sent' on an email that I've already sent... You can do that for me can't you?"

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Shannon Crabill

As someone who does email for a living. I feel this comment.

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Micah Lindley

opens up Chrome DevTools

 
barbu110 profile image
Victor Barbu

In the same manner, we could perhaps say JSON is a programming language, and YAML is a programming language., none of which is not true.

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steelwolf180 profile image
Max Ong Zong Bao

"I don't know what you are talking about I don't care" 🤣🤣🤣

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ethantoney profile image
Ethan Toney

Most people assume I can whip up an app quickly, all because I provided them a website in a short time. They also think I can quickly build them the newest Facebook-like business ("you can code, right? Here's my trillion-dollar idea...") that will automagically gain high traffic.

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Julia Flash

Fun one I heard last week: Dark web requires a special assortment of hard to get computer software, thats why nobody knows about it who are normal and that are not computer experts. 👀

On a podcast's Patreon episode.

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Alessandro Cuppari

Several ones come to the top of my head. The first one (and the one that upsets me the most) it's the huge ignorance amongst the processes/costs/time that it takes to make X or Y project. Once someone told me "oh you're a programmer? You know I just need a website and a mobile app", and then tried to tell me the requirements via whatsapp.

The other one it's the ignorance about the ramifications of web development: you tell people you make websites and stuff like that and then they start asking you about hosting, servers, domains, mobile apps, and so on.

Although I mainly do front end, I also have some knowledge about back end (I would say I'm no beginner, but I'm not by any means an expert), so I can at least answer those questions to some extent, but that's me. There are people that are happy doing only front end and don't know a thing about back end and vice versa, and that's ok!

And I could go on and on, but we'll enter in misconceptions about software development in general.

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João Forja 💭

That what's important are the technologies used and not the domain of the applications we're building.

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urvashi soni

According to all my non-tech friends, I can fix our Wifi, fix out Smart TV, setup projector in the house and obviously fix it as well and whenever I am winning any online game, I have found some hack LMAO.

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🚩 Atul Prajapati 🇮🇳

According to my experience people think that they can make millions easily in Web development and they don't have to give much efforts 😁😂🤣😅

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createitcarlos • Edited

Them: can't you just use Wordpress for that?

Or "Wordpress just comes with that built in"
Me: No that's a plug-in, or, I have to make that custom
Them: no it comes built in
Me: palm to face ( agggh don't touch your face!)

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Davyd McColl

It's only for spiders!

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jgusta profile image
jgusta • Edited

Two things... 1. Family / friends think I make the content myself or at least that my job is mainly to post content. 2. That any software package “that does what we want” can be hooked up to their legacy web code base easily and will save time because it already does the thing.

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Ronak Jethwa • Edited

You are a front end engineer? Great, you can solve this complex algorithm problem too, just like a back-end engineer can center their div!

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Lou (🚀 Open Up The Cloud ☁️) • Edited

That you need a framework or pre-compiler of any sorts.

In my opinion we over-use tools frameworks and pre-compilers far too often.

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sarathsantoshdamaraju profile image
Krishna Damaraju • Edited

"Web development is just copy-pasting code from StackOverflow, nothing hard isn't it ?"

Someone actually asked me this 😅

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Necmettin Begiter

Not about web development but about web developers: We can do anything on any electric/electronic device and anything to such devices. Be it a television, a computer, a printer, a mobile phone, a mouse, a website, a server, a client app, a mobile app and many many more. We can install, fix, format, choose for purchase, configure, and perform any other verb/action.

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Sam

You'll make good money

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madza profile image
Madza • Edited

Devs must not be fully right in the head for staring in a black screen full of some colorful gibberish all day long :)

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mindset profile image
Jayesh Tembhekar ⚡

I am not a printer fixer 😔

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nico-boo

It's on internet, anyone can do it, so it's free!

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kailyons profile image
Loralighte

Two things

  1. HTML/CSS are programming languages
  2. Web-Development is the easiest form of development
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alaindet profile image
Alain D'Ettorre

According to family, I make computers do beep boops and get paid for that.

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Sethu Senthil

Java === JavaScript

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suvink profile image
Suvin Nimnaka

People : Are you a web developer?
Me : Yes
People : Can you hack Facebook?
Me : 🤐

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elmuerte profile image
Michiel Hendriks

That it is solely frontend development.

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pzelnip profile image
Adam Parkin

That true "full stack" developers exist, rather than just front-end devs who know a little server side language, or backend devs that know a little JS.

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waylonwalker profile image
Waylon Walker
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samablews

Isn’t there a shortcut key for that?

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loujaybee profile image
Lou (🚀 Open Up The Cloud ☁️)

Right in the feels.

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johnadan profile image
John McLem Adan

Others think it is equivalent to:
hacking
fixing the computer, printer, mobile phone, internet connection
make the internet faster

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Sharad Raj (He/Him)

It's easy

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createitcarlos

You know, 7 red lines all perpendicular to each other.
youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg

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nedimf profile image
Nedim F

That CSS is fun. It’s the worst!

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Taufik Nurrohman • Edited

That I can hack other Facebook accounts just after opening an element inspector.

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petecodes profile image
Pete

That you need a CS degree.

 
guitarino profile image
Kirill Shestakov

Funny thing, in this case, markdown is also a programming language.

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Jesse M. Holmes

Jeanene still tells everyone that I update Twitter for work, so …