Comment by 65
6 months ago
I do full stack stuff at my job but front end is my favorite thing to work on, particularly if it's an interesting UX.
I think a good understanding of design is also something people don't get about front end. Limited designs from designers means I fill in the gaps in some places.
Dealing with every possible edge case. Breaking out the advanced web APIs when they can easily solve certain problems, e.g. Intersection Observers or Mutation Observers.
Breaking out the advanced CSS APIs like @property rules for super easy and smooth animations.
Improving tooling and JS builds. Making sites fast and reliable.
On and on. Front end can get looked down upon if you're making the same old stuff over and over again. A modal here, a toast there.
But when you get assigned the crazy shit designers come up with, it becomes a very intricate challenge to create the the simplest solutions you can.
Yeah. I am a backend dev these days because it pays more. Backend people have this obnoxious attitude of looking down on frontend without having any idea what it entails. Also demonising V8 and glorifying the JVM for some reason. In my experience frontend challenges around animation for example require a lot more reasoning than most backend tasks.