I've been doing design and development for about 15 years. Things absolutely change. Things are also absolutely hyped up and blown out. Some things that come to mind:
- Web 2.0
- CSS3
- HTML5
- Responsive web design
- Ruby on Rails
You'll notice that all of these were legitimate topics during their day, and most of them became the modern default. One of them, Ruby on Rails, was so hyped up that I bought books and made an effort to learn it. I found out quickly that I hated it, and put the books down. Even still, the Ruby on Rails frenzy went on, but look where it is today. Usage stats from Stack Overflow show it has only a 3rd of the
professional users that PHP has.
So then recently we see that React, Angular, and not so frequently Vue are being hyped up, and if you listen to the people doing the hyping, PHP is dead. That's hard to imagine, mostly because of WordPress and it powering a huge percentage of websites. I totally get why the Javascript technologies are popular, but it makes me wonder if they'll be the next Ruby on Rails. We all use JavaScript, and I'm assuming that because I use it daily. I'm just not so sure what to think about JS on the server. JS doesn't have anything compared to PHP when it comes to functions and stuff under the hood. (and I shouldn't have to pull in a million packages to make an app functional)
I absolutely want to be able to get any job that has to do with web development or design. So far I haven't had a single customer come to me and ask if I use React, Angular, or Vue. I have had some great jobs by being involved with CodeIgniter, and also had people seek me out because of my PHP skills. Other than my website, I don't advertise, so I'm just getting calls based on clients looking for a dev/designer. What's your experience?
