Comment by StaticRedux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by StaticRedux | Hacker News Reader

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Not to be snarky, but this sounds like the viewpoint of a front end developer. One I disagree with. It would be like someone saying front end developers are unnecessary bc anyone can spin up a WordPress site and then go get a coffee.

Can you get a backend going for a thousand users fairly quickly and easily? Sure. But that's the WordPress equivalent of describing back end development. If you have any kind of process based workflow with varying parameters, integration with hardware, detailed reporting / analytics, hell, if you even deal with money or dates/ times / timezones, which is any non-trivial application, backend development gets real complex real fast.

It may be trivial to spin up a WordPress site, but it isn't too put together a solid, reliable React / Redux PWA with isomorphic rendering and offline support. It may be trivial to serve a few API endpoints straight out of the database, but it isn't when you have workflows and processes and states and have to deal with shit like GDPR.

> But there's not a ton of serious thinking involved.

Give a fucking break. The only way this could ever be true is if you only have experience working on extremely trivial applications with no complex functionality.

I'm strictly backend and I've myself becoming less and less useful. Complex requirements are one thing, but implementations just require diligence, not aptitude. I've built loads of apps and sites. Never needed a data structure or algo that wasn't in a standard lib. Most complexity is in integration. Most of my co-workers have no formal CS education and are at no obvious disadvantage.

>Never needed a data structure or algo that wasn't in the standard lib.

Either your definition of algorithm is absurdly narrow, or you are working on some very simplistic problems.

Little bit of both. But essentially the problems are getting simpler. All sorts of problems that used to occupy a lot of my time early in my career are now effectively "solved" and just need a library or SaaS to plug and play. CMS, e-comm, analytics, CRM are all pretty push-button at this point. Maybe some API calls to be made. I remember once needing 3 people spending a month trying to get SSL certs installed on a load balancer. Now it's a checkbox.

>But essentially the problems are getting simpler.

The same could be said about you and someone who started their career in the late 60s. You probably didn't have to write your own OS.

If you were building software that businesses expected in the 60s in the 80s, then your job in the 80s would have been a lot simpler than it was in the 60s. And If you are building the software now that businesses expected 20 years ago, then yes your job is much simpler.

That's generally not how it works though. As capabilities increase, expectations increase, and many times expectations increase even faster than capabilities.

Well, yeah, but my point is basically that work is being pushed up the stack, hence all the energy going into UI development. The biggest challenge for backend devs is usually API Design.

The biggest growth in expectations I've seen are in UI, Analytics, and Security/Data protection. 2 of those are primarily backend, and they aren't something you can just plug in unless you are solving very trivial problems.

And pulling requirements out of business people who don't really know what they want, then turning them into sensible data models that can produce reliable and actionable business intelligence is still where I spend most of my time.

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