Web development as a hack of hacks

An interesting commentary on a hacker news thread. Front-end is often looked down on, but that looked down upon-ness stems mostly from real CS people who see the web stack (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) as suboptimal to their real stacks.

When people talk bad about JavaScript, HTML, and CSS:

The main reason back-end developers don’t understand front-end is that they expect a well-defined environment.

That’s an advantage of the web! The multiple browsers, the varied environments is what gives you reach, unlike any other platform!

if there's any reason why tech ageism is amazingly dumb it's this one imo (have the guy on your team who's graduated past the fanboy stage make your tool, platform and framework choices, you will save far more than the premium that you have to pay him).

Front-end-ers love shiny stuff, but sometimes it’s employers too: (hackernews comment)

This is because employers are demanding that candidates know the latest and greatest technologies (eg. looking for 5 years of experience in 1 year old technology)...If I need to be experienced with [all this shiny new stuff] to stay employable because just doing my job isn’t enough, then I’m going to learn it.

The real problem he comes up with:

the main reason why front-end is so behind: Real Programmers With A CS Degree don’t do front-end. Front-end is for script kiddies and pixel pushers, it’s not to be taken seriously...Unfortunately Real Programmers don’t know anything about browsers and have no desire to learn. That makes them useless as front-end teachers. This problem, more than anything else, is what perpetuates web development as a hack of hacks.