An interesting read. Of course just an personal opinion as the author said, but I think he is correct in lots of his points.
I noticed that I think / feel like this myself sometimes, even while I’m a frontend dev myself.
Fortunately I’m in a nice team that values my frontend skills that all the other full stack/ Backend devs are missing.
Did you notice this bias / devaluing of the frontend work yourself?
I’m self teaching myself to become a true Fullstack Dev, mainly using JS/TS, but also semantic HTML and Vanilla CSS, but have more than a passing knowledge of Bash, and have scripted web scrapers in Python. I also want to become proficient in C, Golang and Rust over the long haul. Lastly, I am studying, and plan to upkeep my skills in Data Structures and Algorithms, as well as Optimizing SQL queries.
That said, I have a degree in Illustration and can definitely identify with many of the sentiments this article expresses and agree with pretty much all the points he makes. You can make the most well designed back end API or optimized Database in the world, but what it returns won’t mean shit to the user if its frontend isn’t accessible, easily understandable as to how to interact with, readable, and also beautiful.
People toss that last one out as a want, not a need, but how often have you chosen a client app over another because you just preferred the way that one looked?
Ultimately aesthetic artistic beauty is one of those things we not only live for, but survive because of. Without it we become depressed, bored, and aggravated. It’s as important as food, as water, as air. We may not die as quickly when deprived of beauty, but we do die all the same without it.
In short, creating beauty is serious work.