I'm not a perfect developer...and neither are you.
Published: 2023-10-26 21:57:12

And frankly, we never will be. 

I've been coding over 17 years now. Learned html/css/php from kids who were building text-based rpgs in the early 2000s and then got a CIS degree later on [I know, I know, CIS is crap compared to CS for programming, but guess what, no one gives a crap what kind of degree you have after your first job, also, web dev is not programming, but that's a discussion for another time]

I've seen hundreds of sites up close. As in, i setup infrastructure, or a lack thereof, designed and build databases, setup DNS, email, configured servers, apache, node, all that fun stuff. I like to sum it up as "I've seen some stuff". 

What I love about this job is that we keep learning. I mean, we literally have no chance of doing a good job if we don't keep learning new things every single year.

When I started out I read maybe 10-20 articles a week. My pet news aggregator now gives me 200-300 a day and I know there's more out there. There's also a lot more filler and just plain bad tutorials out there too now, but there's a lot to learn constantly. 

I write bad code. I know I do. But my code works crossbrowser/responsive and loads the correct information.
I also have websites that have gone unhacked for 10+ years, which is damn good as far as a metric goes compared to what I see in the news every week. Granted, few of the sites I've built have been as large as the corporations getting hacked all the time.

I look at it this way:

> If you look back at your code from 6 months ago and don't find anything to fix, you haven't learned anything and you are falling behind. Your code may still run fine for many years, but that's not the point right? [some will say it is]


Like any long-lived dev, I've had some sites get hacked along the way. [can't wait to hear from the guys it's never happened to]
My advice is not to try to secure everything [it's impossible else those corporations i mentioned before would not be getting hacked], but make sure you have daily backups and a quick recovery plan and that your clients understand it is possible. I never tell a client their site cannot be hacked, that's ignorant and asking for someone to come along and prove you wrong. 

We all learn different ways of doing things and when working in a team have to adapt or fail. Many of us think one way of doing something is the best way to do it. If you've not changed your way of doing things for a few years, you're missing out on different and potentially better ways of doing things. 

Learn base languages and structures without using tools
> If you're building websites but don't know HTML, CSS, JS, SEO, Structured Data, Adaptiveness/Responsiveness thoroughly but you insist everyone should be using your tools and processes, you're missing things and don't even know it. You don't have to do it all at once, but learn the base languages so when you're using tools you use them the best way they can be used. You shouldn't swing a hammer without knowing how to hold a nail and align the wood.
Remember, it takes years to master any of them, so focus on just knowing enough to get things done at first, that will be enough to land you jobs so you can improve from there.


From devs telling me you "NEED TailwindCSS" or "NEED linters" or "NEED CSS preprocessors" to the few who completely refuse to use any of them out of principle. I've talked to hundreds over the years. Everyone has their own preference, but it's easy to spot the bad devs. They're the ones who think the "one way" they know how to do something, is the "only way" to do something. The reality is everything we do can be done a dozen different ways, some better than others, but with or without analytics/data to back it up no one believes you. 

Anywho i wrote this like a year ago, then forgot about it until just now, so here goes, published. :)