The Frontend Treadmill – These Yaks Ain’t Gonna Shave Themselves

Companies that want to reduce the cost of their frontend tech becoming obsoleted so often should be looking to get back to fundamentals. Your teams should be working closer to the web platform with a lot less complex abstractions. We need to relearn what the web is capable of and go back to that.

Let’s be clear, I’m not suggesting this is strictly better and the answer to all of your problems. I’m suggesting this as an intentional business tradeoff that I think provides more value and is less costly in the long run. I believe if you stick closer to core web technologies, you’ll be better able to hire capable engineers in the future without them convincing you they can’t do work without rewriting millions of lines of code.

And if you’re an engineer, you will be able to retain much higher market value over time if you dig into and understand core web technologies. I was here before react, and I’ll be here after it dies. You may trade some job marketability today. But it does a lot more for career longevity than trying to learn every new thing that gets popular. And you see how quickly they discarded us when the market turned anyway. Knowing certain tech won’t save you from those realities.

Source: The Frontend Treadmill – These Yaks Ain’t Gonna Shave Themselves