i am not a react dev: holistic web development
Typically when I apply to software engineering roles that use React, I receive the same feedback alongside a rejection: "not enough (in depth) React experience."
For context, I have years of experience working with Vue, a similar JavaScript framework, I have a side project in React that I've been working on for the past three years, and of course I have knowledge of vanilla JS, HTML, and CSS. The main concern seems to be a lack of professional work experience in React specifically, which is not something that can be easily fixed.
I would like to clarify: I am not a React dev.
I am a web engineer (or web developer or front-end engineer or whatever you would like to call it). I work with a variety of technologies, such as Vue, HTML and CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Gatsby, and any technology that I can use to build a website or query an API. The technology itself isn't my specialty; instead, it's understanding how the web works. It's understanding web performance, accessibility, testing, and the idiosyncrasies of JavaScript that underlie every single JavaScript framework on the market. It's understanding when to use a framework and that they're not appropriate in all cases. It's the ability to learn new technologies and new things (like building browser extensions!) in order to do something on the web.
I worry a little about the state of front-end. I'm not sure if my concerns are hyperbolic ("the sky is falling!") or appropriately foreboding.
I worry that it's too easy to spin up a web application using React, Vue, Angular, etc. without having much knowledge about the web. I worry that there's an over-reliance on CSS frameworks like Tailwind that can only emulate some of the functionalities of CSS. I worry that the web may be becoming less and less accessible due to the proliferation of single-page applications. I worry that accessibility with single-page applications may be becoming such an afterthought that it's never added at all. I worry that instead of web developers or front-end engineers, we have many people who only understand the inner workings of one specific technology and not the web itself. I worry that we're creating many bloated, over-engineered front-end applications that are slower to load than their vanilla JS, HTML, and CSS counterparts. I worry that engineers feel pressured to work on projects with frameworks in order to add to their resume rather than because the project itself demands it. I worry about the perception that front-end is "easy" and CSS isn't worth learning. I wonder if we'll see any ramifications from this five to ten years from now.
That is to say, my skillset is not limited to a specific technology. I'm not a React dev in the same way that I'm not really a Vue developer or a TypeScript developer. Instead, my goal is to take a holistic look at the web and use the best technology for a job, whether that's a JavaScript framework or something else.
To me, the framework itself is the least important part.
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