The majority of my previous technical articles have been focused on problem reflection and methodology. Rarely have I introduced or provided tutorials on specific technologies or tools—unless they were created by me.
It is disheartening to see that many of the veterans, experts, and peers who used to engage in valuable discussions and reflections on front-end issues have gradually faded away or become silent. As a result, the high-quality new content in this area is diminishing.
Therefore, I have decided to take the initiative to formally take up the mantle of "reflecting on front-end issues and striving to produce high-value content" in this niche.
It should be particularly noted that the term "front-end field" is not limited to "Web front-end", which is centered around technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Why Reflect?
Here, I want to reflect on the "Web front-end", and the reasons are as follows:
Background Knowledge
I was introduced to HTML by a net friend during high school, and it wasn't until my internship in 2009 when I started a blog that I truly began developing web pages—I got into the field of "front-end development" out of interest.
Just as with many things in life, liking something does not equate to truly understanding it. Do those who claim to love their hometown or country really dare to assert that they fully understand them?
Similarly, although I have some understanding of the "Web front-end", it is still far from sufficient!
Imagine if one day, someone with a keen interest in and curiosity about the "Web front-end" were to ask me about the conceptual models, origins, and philosophies of the related technologies, like a child questioning everything. How embarrassing it would be if I couldn't answer... 😅😅😅
More importantly, I need to pass interviews to find a job... 😂😂😂
Is Front-end Dead?
Whether "front-end" is dead or whether it has a future is a topic I discussed in my 2020 article "Does Front-end Have a Future?" and in a Zhihu question "Does Front-end Have a Future?". Zenany also wrote "The Future of Front-end" in 2019.
The conclusion is that "front-end" will not die, but "Web front-end" will—by "die", I don't mean it will completely disappear, but rather that the demand and positions directly related to it will significantly decrease, and its level of attention will also drop dramatically.
This is due to the cyclical nature of technology and business domains.
In the future, human-computer interaction will no longer be based on HTML, CSS, and JS. Even if it still involves them, they will no longer be important or will be unrecognizable compared to what we have now, equivalent to learning new technologies and mastering more hardcore foundational knowledge like computer graphics.
Ourai, in What Kind of Job Should I Look for
I want to reflect on the "Web front-end" to make it "die" faster, accelerating the iterative process of the cycle—promoting the development of "Anti-chaos Front-end Engineering" and welcoming a The Effect of Knowledge on Efficiency Part 3.
What to Produce
The main content I will produce will be related to the initial stage of Web front-end engineering, "front-end engineering", focusing on modularization, componentization, and so on, which is what the majority of front-end teams are currently working on.
You read that correctly— "front-end engineering" is just the "initial stage" of Web front-end engineering. There are also the intermediate stage of "front-end industrialization" and the advanced stage of "front-end intelligence".
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, my niche dictates that I will not delve into specific technical details when writing, but rather focus on conceptual and logical thinking to help readers understand the context and development.
Conclusion
This article serves as the "preface" for some of my future technical articles.
I have dug myself a rather challenging pit to fill, with a series of articles and article series. Since the theme is quite broad, the naming of the subsequent articles will not be consistent but will be recognizable.
Most of the articles related to this theme will be available for free, but there may be a few that require payment to read.
I dedicate these articles to those idealistic Chinese software engineers who are willing to pay for their ideals, persist in their original aspirations, and kindly share, communicate, and answer questions like beacons of light.
Top comments (2)
I've been doing this 30 years. I went through microsites, widgets, flash, and so much else. JavaScript is the biggest mess. It's too many people trying to be clever constructing problems to solve with a tool that came before the problem. Imagine how screws would look if the screwdriver came first.
What u refer to as front end engineering here seems to be what folks ive worked with call UX development.
A strong UX is the basis from which a good UI (the superset of gUI) grows. The same UX when developed correctly can materialize in multiple medias, form based html, form based mobile client, voice and digital based conversation, motion based AR & VR, and programmatic service access. The growth of the options beyond the forms is the heat to melt this UI implies ecmascript based framework ice age we’ve been suffering through.
the job of a good ux is to solicit and confirm intent of the user. No programming language has focused on that..leaving it to the frameworks not the compiler. But we’re getting closer all the time to this being a compile time, not a run time, concern