Implementation Details

It’s easy to get caught up in the implementation details when writing code- after all, that’s where a lot of complexity, learning, and excitement lives.

While I’ve learned a lot over the past 7+ years being tightly plugged into the “Javascript Twitter” community, I’ve been there long enough to see fervent debates around technical details, as nuanced and pedantic as imaginable, shouted, retweeted, and liked ad-nauseum.

I’ve also seen those same viewpoints that were previously expressed led by thought leaders and cheered on by the entire community become the new topic to bash 3 years later.

My take is that on average, any new framework or library likely needs 3-5 years at minimum until its proven to be fully worth adopting and betting a career on.

My additional take is that the level of hype and strong opinion expressed around anything new can be really dangerous for junior developers to listen to. Junior developers typically lack the experience that brings nuanced views on technologies, so being subject to such strong, overwhelming support around the trend du jour can give them a false sense of understanding (Dunning-Kruger effect)

Technologies, frameworks, libraries, come and go. Trends come and go. When given a long enough timespan, often times what might once have been championed can easily become unimportant.

It’s important to focus on the fundamentals, pay attention to what’s happening with a big grain of salt, and see the forest from the trees.

Each thought that is thoughted by a thought leader online and then pushed into your newsfeed takes up a significant moment of your attention and brainpower to process, so with that said, make sure it’s something worth thinking about.

I'm Patrick El-Hage and I live and work in San Francisco. I'm also on Twitter.