I've been curious why frontend tools/projects are so often monetized and commercial but backend tools rarely are. Why is that? Since frontend is more art than science?
* Composes better than backend does. Frontend software mostly has to "look" right. It can be dropped in. Going the extra mile to integrate is not always necessary (e.g. keyboard navigation, screen reader support, all the stuff that is "easy" to forget).
* Easier to sell in this niche. The overlap between design/creative and software. Designers already have tons of libraries like this. E.g., FontAwesome, Noun Project, font libraries, stock images. They're already looking for new libraries of resources.
* There's also a common language all frontend software has to be written in, and there's a lot of tools for interop if need be. The market is just larger.
Backend software just doesn't compose as well. People expect when they pay for something for it to fit X use case or they leave. Backend has so many more use cases/entry points to get to MVP. It usually works or it doesn't. Perhaps why of the things monetized in the backend (databases, proprietary web servers), most are big monoliths and exist at well-defined software boundaries where things must be serialized to the "wire" to communicate.
Asking this to gauge sentiment or become better informed, not because I believe it outright...
Could it be that people with more backend-oriented skills are better compensated, or have better market-job-security, than those with frontend-oriented skills on average with respect to regular employment or contracts? If it were so then the usefulness and/or marketability of a project might matter less to respective creators in how to offer their work to the public.
Jankily expressed as backend can afford to produce more for fun and/or street cred, frontend wants both but feels pressure to demonstrate value on top.
Backend integrates with the company; frontend integrates with the customer, with some glue in-between.
You have complete control over the backend, whereas the frontend needs to work with software you have no control over (browser and related extensions, and whatever custom settings the user has applied)
For most companies, the development ROI on the backend is higher, and it's easier to just buy as much of the frontend as possible.
I do run multiple businesses already. But I have learned that below a certain number or revenue/profits, it is not worth my time. So I would buy something that has a minimum threshold of revenue/profits and if that means I can only buy one for now, I will.
I was thinking about getting one of these to replace my 6+ year old XPS 13. Did you compare this to the new XPS 13 Plus? It looks like for Linux laptops, these are pretty much the only two good options. How's the battery life?
I did compare it to the XPS 13 - the XPS looked like a solid machine, but it felt a little cramped to me. I preferred the still-svelte-but-bigger 14" X1.
Another consideration was having a company that cares about Linux running flawlessly, and Red Hat gives their employees Thinkpads. That dogfooding means that if I'm having a problem, it's likely some Red Hat employee is having the same problem, so it ought to be fixed soon :)
Drupal is obviously one of the longest-running content management systems available and they have done a much better job at keeping up with the moving target that is tech, when compared to Joomla / WP.
Outside of being written in TypeScript with more modern conventions, the fact that Payload borders on an application framework is what would make someone choose it over something like Drupal.
Feature-wise, this commonly means reusing Payload's auth in your own app(s), defining function-based access control rather than RBAC, swapping in React components into the admin UI, and more.
But another HUGE reason is that when we built Payload, we tried to keep its own internal conventions as close as possible to just regular JS / TS. If you know JS, you know Payload. With Drupal and even WP to an extent, you need to know how _their_ conventions work. It's all very specific to the platform and the Payload team has always hated that. Devs don't want to learn CMS - they want to learn the underlying language, and Payload embraces that to its core.
Personal opinion: Even as someone who used and loved PHP for a decade, Drupal is just awful. It's overengineered and bloated and the documentation is pretty sparse, not to mention it's hard to scale up. Its admin and editor UX is decades being modern headless CMSes. It is extremely powerful, but seemingly built to handle the most extreme edge cases rather than the most common use cases, and a lot of the power is just confusing and unnecessary for your typical website. In like 10% of the time it takes to get a Drupal system up and running well, you can do the same thing with Wordpress and Advanced Custom Forms and end up with an infinitely better UX, DX, and EX.
Drupal suffers tremendously from "by engineers, for engineers" and it's just an incredibly poor experience if you don't fit that mold. It's non-stop pain for no reward.
Having used it for a major project (both in daily use and in a big migration from D7 to D8/9), I will NEVER take another job that uses Drupal again... it is the second most dreaded web framework for a reason (above only Angular): https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-loved-dre...
Halfway through our Drupal "upgrade" (rewrite, because D7 had no upgrade path), we just gave up on it and went to Next.js + a headless CMS instead. Everyone was massively happier after that... the devs, the editors, IT, marketing, content writers, analytics... Drupal was just soooo bad that even its newest version was years if not decades behind modern experiences.
Sorry I feel so strongly about this... the mere word makes my blood boil. I've never HATED a technology the way I hate Drupal, before or since. If you're considering it for a project for the first time, don't walk, SPRINT as far away as it as you possibly could.
I ran a team at a weekend hackathon event for non-profits. We needed to finish building their new site on the latest version of Drupal. I had SEVEN devs working on a 5 page brochure site with a page to manage events and we couldn't get it done! I felt terrible leaving it incomplete at the event, but honestly, with Drupal as the tech stack—my hands were tied. Luckily the developer who started the work was able to finish it a few months later.
To do it all over again, I would have convinced them to throw away what they had and use a different platform. If we used any other tech stack, we could have finished and launched the site during the event.
That was the first, and last time I touched Drupal.
Wow. I was seriously considering Drupal as an option for an lod-style minimal-JS site (with mainly news+comments, gallery, wiki, statistics and stuff). Previous CMS I used was quite allright, but maintainers dropped it :( Can you suggest something besides Dripal and WP? (pls not JS)
What is lod? If you limit yourself to non JS, do you care what language the CMS is written in? Does it have to have all the features built in or just support plug-ins? Self hosted or vendor hosted in the cloud?
Sorry, I was typing "old" :) And yes, I care about language to be able to support it and manage resources (PHP, CPP is fine). Self-hosted, bare metal. I used PostNuke-based CMS (LAMP) and was very satisfied with it. I was also thinking about basing site on nextcloud (I tried it for storage for friends, would be nice to integrate it with CMS), but it's a huge thing in itself I don't really know how to approach )
Oh wow, when you said old, you really meant it lol. Haven't heard of the Nukes in decades now.
Honestly, I hate to say this, but if you really want that level of server-side all in one power... maybe Drupal IS worth considering after all. Most modern sites aren't built that way anymore, instead opting to compose a site out of many services (eg a CMS for marketing pages, Discourse for a forum, an auth provider linking them all together, etc.)
A monolithic community on a single engine is in fact the kind of (rare) use case that Drupal actually fits... making its complexity possibly worthwhile. It's just overkill for most sites that aren't like that.
WordPress might also be able to get there eventually, with a lot of plug-ins, but at that point it would be so bloated that Drupal might actually be cleaner. Might also be worth checking to see if any of the older PHP CMSes (Joomla, etc.) are still being maintained.
Sorry, I haven't looked at this sort of use in years and wouldn't be able to provide more details than that :/
Then that time comes to change jobs but even after 10+ years of experience, you now need to grind Leetcode out for months just so you have a chance of getting through pointless tech screens... how do you avoid burnout from that alone, and how do you even get through the process if you're burnt out to begin with?
Hello person with my same struggle yet different username. I feel you 110% on this one.
There is a completely demoralizing sense that my career has "evaporated" and none of my achievements, accomplishments or jobs have any worth.
It has caused me to become incredibly bitter, resentful and angry at the world. I don't know how to turn the trauma of this mistreatment and abandonment into a happy "this is ok" face for the world.
I just really don't understand how the industry adopted these ridiculous practices. I'm lucky that I get a ton of recruiters reaching out once I toggled my LinkedIn to say I'm open, but I don't understand what they expect other than me to say "I guess I'll message you in 3 months after I take on an unpaid second job of learning how to write algorithms I never once used in the last 15+ years of my engineering career to solve problems that are meant to just trick me". You would think they'd want to make it so that engineers did have the option of evaluating other companies at any time, rather than having to prepare endlessly. If I decide I want a new job now (which I did a few weeks ago), I can't do anything about it for a while (unless I'm one of those who practices LC all week rather than learning much more useful things).
No point in ranting further about this.. everyone is well aware.
There's of course some companies that don't subject you to this nonsense, but the list is really limited, and just finding out who they are has taken me many weeks and many phone calls. But a month of that plus trying to "learn" everything required for all of these interviews has made me burnt out and bitter (just like you said). I don't want to jump through these ridiculous hoops and play this stupid game... but what's the alternative?
My current strategy is lowering my expectations and being willing to engage in different work.
What you are describing that I feel in the same boat on is the impossible whack a mole game we are trying to play. It's like a dart board on an always moving target.
It's impossible to catch that objective, you just need to practice / focus on what you are good at and try to look for opportunities that need these skills. It's hard for me because I don't want to work with PHP anymore, but I get a lot of recruiter spam for it. Maybe I could even be ok with a PHP dev based job if the people and structure around the work was reasonable and humane.
My goal right now is to focus on my strengths, try not to be too self-critical when the few opportunities I do see don't match up. It's a waiting game I just wish there was more that I could do proactively.
I'm currently going through this right now. I gave myself a month to "study" for the tech interviews, but I find myself demotivated and can't muster the time or the effort to go through them. I'd do one or two Leetcode problems, but that's it.
I've also been through the "Everyone in the world sucks" phase and I do still think that to a certain degree lol but I also feel more in tune with analysing myself and emotions when I have such thoughts.
For instance, I notice that I might get angry that a person driving didn't see me at a pedestrian crossing. But what's the point in being angry? Why should I let that person "put me" in a bad mood?
I believe the trick is to recognise your emotions, what you can control and what you can't. Does it make sense to be angry at things beyond your control?
Also I've come to understand that the brain is fed what we give it. What you feed it through media, television, the people around you - these all affect it. We should ideally fiercly guard what our brain is fed. Thinking about this I started to notice how much people drink in movies / TV and how it made me feel like drinking too. It's a bit like "the five people you surround yourself most with" idea.
I'm still a work in progress, and hopefully some of what I've mentioned can help you on your own journey.
Leetcode is difficult for sure, but I do think it's good in many ways - at least it exists, you know it's necessary and the way I see it, it's kind of like having the answers to the exam!
Is it fair people make you go through this hazing process? No, but unless you have some better ideas, if it's truly the only thing between you and what you want, then maybe it's time to reframe it in your mind - what are some good things that could come out of it?
I know it's hard when "the world fucking sucks", but I'm sure there's also a part of you that enjoys learning and doing puzzles. Maybe it's time to tap back into that side of you. Take your time.
I love programming but I hate the gatekeepers who stand in the way of my autonomy. They think they know better but if they did, they wouldn't need to hire engineers in the first place. Product people can be amazing guiding lights in the dark but they can also be the most cancerous self-indulgent babies ever.
