A very interesting read! I would argue that this is only in part due to developers. You touch on the effects of this hype-driven-development, something I used to call Resume-Driven-Development but not the causes.
I do agree with your point of view, that people too often get tricked by the new shiny thing and don’t bother to look at numbers, problems the tool/lib/framework solves, use-cases etc. But those people were not just born like that, looking for the shiniest thing on the market, they could implement.
In many of the cases, poor HR practices result in these types of results. Misleading job descriptions advertising greenfield projects, technology revamps when all the employer needs are coding standards and some tests. Those create the false assumption that whoever lands that job, must step in and rewrite that thing, make it better, use the latest technologies. Bring them all to the future!
Have you ever seen job descriptions with phrases such as: “We’re looking for really passionate developers. You must be in love with the cutting edge and always use the latest technologies!”? Have you ever been asked at an interview if you’re passionate about your work?
Our current HR practices hire people who are more interested in what the job has to offer to them (not just revenue). They’re not concerned with what they can offer to the company, to the project they’re working on — — how they can contribute.
There’s also a big influx of people who are new to development and usually start with front-end, which seems easier. Not having formal education (required by many companies in Europe), they have no other chance than to learn a lot of frameworks and libraries. They don’t have anything to guide them towards learning programming principles, design patterns, etc. All that is written in a brittle and unfriendly way.
Job descriptions require experience with a minimum of 2 frameworks, 3 development methodologies, 10 libraries 27 data formats, 2 backend technologies, continuous whatever, and build systems.
Usually, all that translates to : “We’re looking for somebody who can type without looking at the keyboard and knows HTML CSS and a bit of JavaScript”. The problem is that the message being transmitted to people is that of breadth of knowledge and experience. In order to land such a job, people go through a lot of pain, boot camps, video tutorials, articles and when they do land it, they want to apply that knowledge. That’s what they’ve been hired to do, right?
Cheers!
