Please help this old dog to learn a new trick!

I am in a very hard moment in my career.

Being a dinosaur coder (54 yo here) I have been comfortably seated at my island of old school knowledge (HTML, Javascript and ASP/PHP) for a long time. Working on the same company for 15 years by now, among other things I keep their website running. It uses a commercial framework that happily allows me to get things quickly done with just some HTML, JS, vb.net, c# and xml.config. Eventually I borrow some CSS and JQuery without really bother to understand how it works (since it works). My employers really don't care how I make things since I keep the wheels turning. And because the requests are always within a tight time frame mostly of times I end choosing the quickest (and dirtiest) way.

So this is my history. And, no, I am not proud of it.

The good part is that I am very interested on learn some new technology but I am completely at lost about what direction take. So I would like to ask what are the best bet at the moment for the web industry? CSS3? MVC5? What? I am opened to suggestions!

Thanks for helping this old dog!

 

I take it you still understand HTML and CSS. So from here, I would do a course on ECMAScript (check YouTube, there's a ton of in-depth courses for free) and then learn NodeJS, MongoDB - and then you can take it from there. You can be a full-stack web developer with just JavaScript these days, so learn ECMAScript, NodeJS, MongoDB, either Angular or React and just focus on building projects to learn once you get a good understanding of these technologies. Like I said, YouTube has a ton of long, extensive free courses so you don't have to pay for a course or anything.

React developers are in high demand. If you go on Indeed or other job site you can just look at the technologies they're hiring for if you're interested in getting a good job in the industry.

 

In my opinion you should start learning about NodeJS and React
they are hot right now.

 

Thanks buddies! Seems that React and NodeJS are winning so far! I'll take a peek on it!

 

Simply because you mentioned a "framework that lets me get things done", as well as the mental midgetry that is jQuery...

I'd suggest you learn how to ACTUALLY write HTML and CSS. That might sound odd, but I'm willing to bet you simply don't know either as well as you think. That you mention learning CSS3 supports this as it makes me wonder if you're still coding your HTML 1990's style -- aka HTML 3.2 with 4 tranny slapped atop it, or 5 lip-service around it.

How good is your semantic markup skills? "Semantic markup" being a sick euphemism for "using HTML properly" that came into being so as to not offend all the HTML 3.2 fanboys who to this day still vomit up presentational browser-wars style markup. Are you practicing separation of presentation from content? Are you using tags, classes and ID's to say what things are and NOT what you want them to look like?

It's one of those things we're SUPPOSED to have been doing for over two decades that MOST developers still either make lame excuses for not doing, or flat out are unable to understand... and it's something that can take your web development work to the next level.

Especially when it can show you what utter mentally enfeebled TRASH things like "frameworks" are. Almost universally it seems like frameworks are a scam using terms like "easy" as glittering generalities, so that sloppy incompetent copy-pasta can piss on the entire process and make everyone work ten times harder with ten times the code needed. But because everyone says these bloated, ignorant, train wreck laundry lists of how NOT to build websites are somehow magically "easier" it must be.

Even when it's a bald faced LIE!

Also if someone says something is the latest "hotness", stay the blazes away from it. The rank and file morons yum up any old trash no matter what incompetent junk it is. Just look at such media darlings as react, vue, bootstrap, jQuery, tailwind, and every other halfwit "framework" out there.

Don't believe me? If you're even CLOSE to being qualified to write a single blasted line of HTML, this should send you running to the hills!

  <body>
    <header>
  <div class="collapse bg-dark" id="navbarHeader">
    <div class="container">
      <div class="row">
        <div class="col-sm-8 col-md-7 py-4">
          <h4 class="text-white">About</h4>
          <p class="text-muted">Add some information about the album below, the author, or any other background context. Make it a few sentences long so folks can pick up some informative tidbits. Then, link them off to some social networking sites or contact information.</p>
        </div>
        <div class="col-sm-4 offset-md-1 py-4">
          <h4 class="text-white">Contact</h4>
          <ul class="list-unstyled">
            <li><a href="#" class="text-white">Follow on Twitter</a></li>
            <li><a href="#" class="text-white">Like on Facebook</a></li>
            <li><a href="#" class="text-white">Email me</a></li>
          </ul>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="navbar navbar-dark bg-dark shadow-sm">
    <div class="container d-flex justify-content-between">
      <a href="#" class="navbar-brand d-flex align-items-center">
        <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="2" aria-hidden="true" class="mr-2" viewBox="0 0 24 24" focusable="false"><path d="M23 19a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H3a2 2 0 0 1-2-2V8a2 2 0 0 1 2-2h4l2-3h6l2 3h4a2 2 0 0 1 2 2z"/><circle cx="12" cy="13" r="4"/></svg>
        <strong>Album</strong>
      </a>
      <button class="navbar-toggler" type="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbarHeader" aria-controls="navbarHeader" aria-expanded="false" aria-label="Toggle navigation">
        <span class="navbar-toggler-icon"></span>
      </button>
    </div>
  </div>
</header>

Code (markup):

... and if you don't know what's wrong with that, you don't know HTML or CSS anywhere near as well as you think... because people who see nothing wrong with writing HTML like that are nothing more than FRAUDS!

 

Well, I think that "pass" in a coding prank doesn't prove anything (and no, I didn't even bother to run my eyes over your html "test" as soon as I noticed what you were trying to do. I have met several small men like you along my life so I know the type). Besides, someone that has been working as a full stack coder for over a decade and a half in the same company cannot be called a fraud. Please do the same thing first (work for a similar period of time in the same place) and only then you come back to talk to me.

Now, you should show more respect to your peers instead to use your SUPPOSED coding skills to troll someone that is asking for help. It's definitively not nice and neither funny. It is, to say the least, evil.

Said that, you failed miserably as a human being. See, even IF I would a fraud as a coder I still can learn any technology or language I wish. By the other hand for you it's a dead alley because as far as I know it doesn't exist any fix for a defective character. You, my friend, unfortunately is a bad person by design.

I am so sorry for you.

 

The what now? I'm not even certain what you're trying to say there... what does that even mean? You kind of lost me with the Engrish moist goodry. Can I assume English is not your native tongue?

Not a test, a copy/paste from the very first code example -- "album" -- from bootstrap.

https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/examples/album/

Which is knee deep in endless pointless DIV for noting, endless pointless classes for nothing, presentational use of classes dialing practices back to the point that you might as well be writing HTML 3.2, BUTTON tag for scripting meaning it has no business in the markup in the first place ... for something that hasn't ever been JavaScript's job... and if I have to explain why you don't start a document with a H4... well...

FACTS. That's not trolling, that's telling you how it is. It is proof positive that the people who created, maintain, and promote the use of bootstrap are unqualified to even open their mouth on the topic of web development! By any meaningful metric of what HTML is, what it's for, and concerns like accessibility and usability, it is a monument to ignorance, incompetence, and ineptitude.

That's the truth. How DARE I come out and say it in this world of lazyness and echo-chambers. Gotta keep all these lies popular with the public, got to stamp out that dissent before anyone can realize the media darling has been full of manure from day one.

Then we wonder how scammers like Elizabeth Holmes, Mercola, Paltrow, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, and that dirtbag calling himself an avocado continue to have loyal defenders. Bow down before the almighty propaganda machines.

You mean discredit frameworks, promote accessibility, and try to turn this industry around before people who just don't give a flying purple fish about their work drive it off a cliff?

It's very hard to "show respect" for those who simply don't seem to give a damn, and blindly claim that their bloated incompetent nonsense -- aka "frameworks" -- are magically superior to vanilla coding when EVERY piece of tangible evidence says that they are LYING... and in fact are unqualified to even flap their yap on the TOPIC! It is hard to be respectful of those who seemingly fail upwards and eventually screw over the companies they are working for and an accessibility consultant like myself has to come in, throw it all out, and micro-manage IT "professionals" where the ONLY things they know as "developers" is how to cut and paste other people's work!

If trying to make things "better" makes someone a lousy human being? Well to blazes with humanity then. Down. Let it all burn down. Burn it to the ground. We'll be safe and sound. When it all burns down.

You want to talk about evil? Blindly following bald faced lies is evil. Promoting and/or making up excuses for lying, cheating, and stealing is EVIL. Hence, the people who create, maintain, and promote the use of frameworks like bootstrap, tailwind, and W3.CSS are EVIL.

But how DARE anyone speak out against them or suggest that just using HTML properly/semantically, with separation of presentation from content using tags, classes, id's to say what things ARE and not what you want them to look like, is the proper approach.

And of course you go straight for the waving your credentials around as some sort of "proof" about how much superior you are as a human being. Well let's go there. I've been programming for near on four decades, professionally for three, twenty of that with web technologies, near-on a decade programming ada for .. well... it's Ada. I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you. That's a joke. The past decade I've been an accessibility consultant going into public utilities, banks, healthcare services, and government agencies to drag them into WCAG compliance, so as to get them out from under litigation both civil and criminal.

WCAG violations making companies run afoul of laws like the US ADA and UK EQA because people who've "worked for the same company for fifteen years" still have their heads up 1997's backside, don't use semantic markup, don't take HTML seriously, and if you took away all their precious "frameworks" would be utterly incapable of doing the job they have doing improperly the entire time. But because nobody has pointed a gavel their direction yet, and their bosses / co-workers are equally ill-informed, they get away with it. Then everyone is flabbergasted When it all blows up in their faces.

Your entire response sounds and awful lot like the CTO's and marketing execs of these places I'm called into; defending the indefensible; attacking a messenger bearing an unpopular truth... where I basically have to end up quoting Winston Wolf word for word. So pretty please, with sugar on top... clean the ****ing car!

You'd think things like the lawsuits against Domino's and Beyonce would be wake-up calls, but no... Everyone just wants to keep lazily sleazing out their blind copypasta without the slightest understanding of the underlying technologies, consequences be damned.

But yeah, I'm the evil one. Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

It was not meant to troll, it was 100% serious in that you should review your HTML and CSS skills. Despite your "years" of experience, it's almost certain from what you said in your initial post that you don't know either of them as well as you think. Just as you likely need to learn more JavaScript since if you're even looking at jQuery, you don't know enough JS yet. Since looking at it too if you know how to use JS properly should make you recoil in abject horror at the mind-numbing stupidity of it! Much less all the blasted things people do with both it and JavaScript that are NONE of JavaScript's bloody business!

 

Web is more like native app nowadays. It's basically a platform for download something.

Just learning CSS and you have endless to learn. They have speech module for CSS now: https://www.w3.org/TR/2020/CR-css-speech-1-20200310/

I hate this. Things I've just learned few weeks ago become obsoleted already.

You say you know C#, that's great. If I possess such knowledge I would go for WebAssembly. It's inroad onto the webs.

 

I hear you. One of the reasons I avoided to update myself for YEARS was exactly this, that is, how fast the knowledge becomes obsolete or the market simply decided that it is not as good as it used to be anymore. Anyway, now I am paying the price and having to recover from a big gap. The good part is that I am not being pressed by no one else by myself so I have plenty of space and time to do that, and I believe that in one year at most I can get satisfactorily realigned.

I have checked the trends and also following the suggestions of @cronik and @komrad I was after some JS tools. I decided to start with React/JSX, CSS3 and Ecmascript 6. Actually I already am attending to a cool online course.

Well you can start learning C#. It's not hard because it's just a C-like language... so if you already have some background in ANY similar language (such as JS) you will feel in home. The disadvantage in my opinion is that it's a corporation product (Microsoft). If you are after a MS-based career that's OK other than that you will be very limited and very soon you may be in my shoes. When I get into this company over 15 years ago I was forced to put mostly of my knowledge aside and embrace the Microsoft because it's a MS-driven company (SQL Server, VS, etc). Please don't get me wrong as I am NOT spitting in my own plate. Not at all. On contrary, it's a GREAT company where I built a magnificent career and I am very happy specially considering my current age.

Talking about Microsoft stuff the big advantage is that if you be lucky to get a job on a good company as I did you will be done (in the good sense). See, I work as a remote employee living in a different hemisphere (I am in Brasil and company is in USA) for only 1-2 hours a day and earn a salary that I never could dream even if I worked 10 hours a day in a local company in my own country! The best part is that I can stand with my current knowledge base since it's more than enough to do everything I need. Sounds great uh? Well, the counterpart is that if I would get fired today I would be screwed. Hopefully I don't see it happening (at least not in a short or medium term). However it's a particular case and looking back to when I got aboard I cannot believe how lucky I was. I think that it's one of those rare cases of the bolt that won't fall in the same tree again.

Back to the real life and talking about the current computer industry, with all nice and strong open source stuff out there it's obvious to me that THIS is the way to go. Forget about learn big companies stuff. Honestly if I was a young code starting my labor life today I never would look at Microsoft direction (or Oracle, or any of the type). Such big companies are losing terrain very quickly and they won't stand for too much more. The future is in the free stuff. I have been trapped into the 'corporation software schema' knowledge for too much time and now I am eager to see new landscapes.

But it's just my opinion.

 

Ignore personal opinions on how they feel things should be built. You need to update your knowledge of CURRENT and trending languages, frameworks etc to stay relevant IN the working market so you can 1 continue to make $$$ and 2. have a plan B when you separate from your current company. I think you should consider Node.js and GoLang for backend. And front end frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue. Also learn more about MODERN web development by building microservices, api's etc.

If your technical skills haven't been refreshed in 15 years and you are a developer by trade then you made a critical career error. You should be spending a couple hours a week at least after hours on personal projects that require you to use current updated technologies and should introduce those new technologies to your stack at work. There are still people out there working for companies updating Perl CGI web based systems for the last 20 years. Even Web Designers still designing layouts with HTML tables. Those people today are dead in the market place. The scary thing is they don't even know it.

 

Thank you for the feedback. I have tried to recover the lost terrain and studied a couple hours a DAY.

Currently I am attending to JS and CSS online classes (that I always used but never bothered to go deeper). My next step is to look in the direction of Node.JS and PHP (that I used intensively years ago but quit because the company I work for doesn't use it).

I have a pet project (a patient controller for my wife) that I didn't start with because I am still deciding what technology to use. I am trying to see the pros and cons among JS, PHP and C#. Being a desktop app surely C# would be more appropriated, but I just don't know what to do. Also I don't want to start doing it one way and then have to abandon and start over. I think I will start with the database and some stored procedures.