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What use is a frontend developer (having exclusively frontend development knowledge) that's not a designer / isn't good at design.
Sorry if I'm being harsh, but you're either a web developer, knowing how to build web apps (or websites, or whatever), or a UX developer or whatever, knowing how to do pretty (and usable and accessible and...) things. Or even both.
Lemme say it differently. You either come from a web design and build a frontend, or come from the development of an application (database, logic, architecture, APIs, etc., backend++) and build a frontend for it. Again, or both.
Not being able to design, and not being able to build a product, is just... nothing? You're in the middle.
Sorry, but I don't think you're a developer. Maybe a coder.

Comments
  • 4
  • 3
    that's just like.... your opinion man
  • 2
    I work in places where designers do design work and front end devs do front end dev work. What are you a fucking manager? Use ur fucking brain
  • 1
    @shovethisrant I'm sorry but writing code isn't developing.
    Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anyone who just works coding frontend _is_ not a developer. `is` != `works as`, but someone who just knows how to use react, for example, and doesn't know anything about user experience or any complementary knowledge that helps "come up" with something of value... Idk, I wouldn't call that a developer.
    Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but development and coding mean different things to me.
  • 3
    I am just giving you shit. This conversation just fascinates me.
  • 0
    @Demolishun I'm not gatekeeping, I've been there. We all start somewhere.
    But don't call yourself a builder if you just know how to place bricks. It's not about being worse or least, it's about being different, and comprehensive.
    Imagine if someone called themselves senior for spending 5 years coding in academic projects, having no work experience. You may be a great developer, but you are still a junior if you haven't been part of a "real-world" project.
  • 1
    you could keep this rant a bit shorter:

    What use is a frontend developer?
  • 2
    @tosensei A frontend developer should be able to:
    - develop
    - frontend
    And that's very useful.
    Don't you agree?
  • 2
    I think designers aren't so good with the details and have low frustration tolerance

    developers need to have high frustration tolerance. they put together all the little things. they gotta wrangle changing libraries, code fragility, bugs that they aren't even the ones causing

    and gotta be honest I don't even know what designers do. they seem to just read Internet articles and believe them, which doesn't sound like a good methodology to me
  • 3
    a frontend dev in many orgs will not need to make design visually pretty. A dev will never come close to designing an incon for example

    They do need to have a sense of usability and accessibility but not visual details

    For example: many teams have strict separations of design and dev. The designers might build a design system, deciding all visual details.

    When building a feature dev might add a suggestion like ”a dropdown would be better than a bunch of buttons” but the dev would never need to decide the border radius of the dropdown
  • 2
    I assume that being well versed in webpack and vite flows and customizations, minification, tree shaking, typescript compiler bullshit, transpiling, and Frontend testing, amongst other nodejs related crap would constitute a good Frontend dev work.
    JS is trash for sure, but Frontend stuff is still legit without actual UI design chops.
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