"Front End Developer" or who I am by profession

The dominance of a variety of professions one way or another connected with the web continues to oppress. Every day, new ways are being invented to do what has long been done, more and more new frameworks are being invented. But the abstraction in the design increases and the responsibility of the developers is growing systematically. As a result, the modern names of the web professions are becoming more like a cunning marketing move, and not really specializations.

In more adult branches than IT, such marvelous incomprehensible professions with names like “coach-expert”, “consulting manager” or some “cleaning tutor” have long since settled. The web industry gradually suffers the same bitter fate.

Cacophony of professions

“Web-designer”, as a concept in the Russian-language space, does not at all coincide with the analogous concept in the English-language space. A Russian-speaking web designer is creating a collage and layouts of future pages. Advanced web designers, in order to be different from those of low-skilled designers, additionally label themselves “UI / UX designer” or “interface designer”, implying that they previously think with their head before drawing collages and layouts of future pages and applications. And the most advanced call themselves “art director” or something else. Those who did not have time to hang themselves a medal "UI-expert", scornfully teased by Photoshop operators. Photoshop operators, or even newcomers to the industry, are deliberately trying to get the proud title “UI / UX”, meaning that they are not serious guys here, but serious-minded guys.

And we also have a separate, recently dying, profession of a “web-maker-up”, which involves translating the pictures drawn by the designer into readable and adequate html + css and sometimes mixed with javascript. If a web designer knows more than just a set of tags and a little css, for some reason it becomes embarrassing to be called a “web designer”, and he hangs the label “front-end developer”, implying that he makes full-fledged applications in the browser, rather than just cutting a picture on divs and tablets or taking a css bootstrap and simply overriding variables for CSS. Even the more fashionable name of the same profession does not even want to translate from English, because in Russian it doesn’t sound cool enough - “client-side developer”. In Russian, this would have been the usual “application developer in the browser,” and at one time googlotranslate literally translated it as a “front-end developer,” which sounds rather offensive. It is interesting that such a profession appeared in the distant past, ie6, opera8 and ff2, and precisely because those people who had been brought up with a sense of beauty did not have the strength and patience to learn how to create html files that are equally well displayed in these ie6, opera8 and ff2.

As a result, we obtain a cacophony of professions, one of which is more incomprehensible than the other. Web designer, interface designer, web designer, front-end developer, client-side developer, javascript developer ...

Systematize it

The correct web designer simply needs to be able to output not a beautiful psd-ai-sketch image, but a set of html + css + js, completely ready for integration into an existing application. As a result, the web designer should still be a good web layout designer. Of course, he should also use his head in his work, so the “designer-interfaces” as a concept should also be absent. "Web Designer" and the point.

Those designers who are not ready to invent interfaces from scratch, but like to tinker with css and optimize rendering in the browser, and the size is more correct to call web technologists. Sounds at least proudly. Web technologist does not impose a page, and does not write applications on the Angular. The technologist solves problems that arise everywhere - how to rotate the text clockwise, so that rendering does not slow down on mobile, how to reduce the traffic of the background image and how to make vector images appear in the mobile opera.

The right frontend developer should be renamed to a simple javascript developer and not to stand out, because the myriad tools created for the web do not fundamentally differ from that mass of tools for any other environment, be it to java, ruby, PHP or something else . Ruby-developer remains a Ruby-developer, regardless of the number of gems and tools used in the work. And for some reason, it is distinguished from the Erlang developer, despite the fact that both are in the generally accepted sense of a “backend developer”. But the front-end developer should suddenly be able to program equally well on es6 and react-js and at the same time write excellent TypeScript code with AngularJS. Modern realities should distinguish TypeScript developer from elm developer and knowledge of client frameworks should be positioned in the same way as knowledge of frameworks from any developer. Django-developer and developer who can write plug-ins for ansible are fundamentally different in basic knowledge, despite the fact that both are written in python.

And reading (or composing) a resume with the mark “UX / UI-designer”, first of all, you need to pay attention to the fact that the candidate does not know how to compose html correctly, is not familiar with browser technologies, and probably has little graphic tools for creating full-scale layouts, and not that this person perfectly understands what size of the button you need to put in the upper right corner and how to reduce the number of clicks for the user to register. Approximately the same logic is with the front-end developer - first and foremost it’s clear and clear that he’s not interested in working on interfaces and he doesn’t know how, and not that he has an angular version with closed eyes.

Instead of conclusions, you can suggest that you stop labeling non-existent or mythical professions and critically approach developers who call themselves that.