What's going on?

If you're interested in Web Dev content, you have inevitably come across the notion that "Web Development is a complete mess". The blogs, articles, YouTube videos, Twitch steams... it's a never ending reminder on how Web Dev just ain't the same. The ever increasing complexities of what was once simple; 80+ JS frameworks that will be 90+ by the end of this article, browser compatibility, performance, accessibility, design practices/patterns, state management, the latest and greatest UX/UI designs, etc...

The thing here is... it's all true. Web developer is more complex than ever was before and will more likely continue to increase over time. Users are demanding more and more while developers are seeking new ways to meet these needs with technology "enhancements". I say "enhancements" because they usually come in the forms of new frameworks or major functionality updates to existing frameworks, more databases to interact with, more new languages to learn, more and more of a wide variety of other things that you have to do to meet the users demands.

But in reality, you don't have to do or learn most if not any of these new things.

The Facts

If you're employed, not working for the valley or a startup... chances are you are not working on a cutting-edge technology. You're more likely working on legacy code or some sort of crumbing piece of a 3rd party system that the Business Unit decided was better than whatever custom system your team could build.

All of those things you learned prior to getting that job more than likely went out the window. The people there don't care for all of the latest tech. Why? It doesn't move the needle for the company. These guys have their own problems, and modernism of web dev isn't one of them. You thought learning .NET 8 Blazor was going to help you? They are still on ASP.NET WebForms. You were like... we can do away with JSON and only pass hypermedia through our APIs using HTMX to render them on the page! They thought you said HTML incorrectly. Let's use Signals for our state management approach! "Is something broken"? The "Web Dev Mess" doesn't exist in the capacity that everyone seems to tell you.

What does this mean for me?

Chill out and stop worrying about the Modern Web Dev problem. It's all good and encouraged to listen and learn about these things and concepts, but it really needs to be understood: Your employer and coworkers don't care. Learn what you need to do to continue progressing in the direction you want to be in and ignore the rest. Let someone else cry about issues they won't actually have to deal with themselves.

What if I'm new and don't know where to start?

Go find yourself a job posting and check if you know at least 60% of the requirements. Go learn that stuff instead of banging your head on the hype, eventually... you'll start to get where you want to go. At least, that's what worked out for me.