If you can JavaScript, you can backend on the Modern Web Podcast
Rob Ocell caught me in the middle of a 3 week fire at work for a conversation on the Modern Web Podcast. We talked about DST issues and more in a wide ranging conversation about Serverless, JavaScript backends, and the myth of vendor lock-in.
Talking points
- why storing time in UTC doesn't work
- JavaScript programmers are real programmers
- the backend is in many ways easier than the frontend
- what "fullstack" means or how good it is for your career depends on the size of company you work with
- modern web clients can be as complex as an iOS or desktop app
- frontend and client code may run on the server 🤯
- microservices are for scaling organizations, not code
- serverless takes the idea of microservices and automates/abstracts all the boilerplate
- thinking about reliability and partial failures is The Big Step when you move from client code to distributed [backend] systems
- why you shouldn't worry about vendor lock-in
- the trap of writing decoupled code
- on being a generalist or a specialist and why that's the wrong question
- Senior Engineer can be anyone from 5 to 20 years experience and what is it that makes you stand out
Quotable quotes
"A microservice is just a small monolith" ~ ST
"If you're doing a full redesign. The business logic is going to be different. Very little of this code will be salvageable anyway" ~ ST
"Just lean into it, go with your decision, use the vendor, rely on them. It's going to make your code a lot simpler" ~ ST
"So many mid engineers becoming senior engineers and senior engineers becoming architects, believe this idea and will just try to avoid coupling to anything." ~ RO
"Unless you're actively using two vendors for the same thing at the same time, your abstraction is almost definitely vendor locked-in in ways you don't even realize until you try to use someone else" ~ ST
"When somebody is hiring an experienced engineer. What they're really looking for are the battle scars" ~ ST
"I see so many teams crash on the rocks of trying to avoid vendor lock-in" ~ RO