JavaScript landscape, job market and what next

JavaScript landscape seems very different now than it looked few years ago.

There's ton of new bundlers/build tools. Esbuild, Vite for example. Build tools are now written partially in Rust or Go.

How do you start React projects? Back in times there was Create React App. But who needs it? Starting app with Next.js is much simpler and more comfortable. I see also that Vite is popular.

And managing state? Back in the day there was Redux... but it just seems too much of a hassle now, when you have functional component with hooks. Local state FTW! And when you need go global, there's React context.

Managing state libraries are still used though. And Redux is used too, but it lost it's monopoly. There's many libraries which are used right now. And there libraries like ReactQuery that also manage fetching data. Something that was fucked up in Redux projects (not fault of Redux per se, but its ecosystem)

When we talking about fetching data... I've got impression that you can't be pure frontend developer nowadays. You have to know Node.js frameworks, understand AWS or other cloud provider, know a little bit about DevOps. Job market is more and more demanding. You have to be good in everything at once.

I myself got a little bit lost. Should I go more deeply into new frontend technologies? Or maybe I should catch up with backend? I've done both professionally, though frontend is my stronger skill. But is it sustainable? I don't want to be behind.

There are also things I really like doing like programming games or WebGL graphics. But there's no actual market for this. I mean there's some market, but it's very niche. Very few regular job offers and freelance WebGL market is race to the bottom.

I also like writing in Rust but still - right now Rust is language for hobbyists and open source maintainers, let's be sincere.

And finally I have many personal projects of all kinds - even wrote lately small programming language that compiled do JS. It's very interesting but what money can I make from these?

Well. I ponder about writing books (or ebooks, paid articles etc.) about programming and I believe things I do now, even not profitable at this moment, could serve as educational examples on "how programming works" or "how to write code".

But if I want to write books, I need to start right now. So that's why this blog post. Though I write about programming already on forums or on my Polish blog https://pl.lukejli.com/ but I kind of have very writer's block. Maybe the reason is when I write in my own language, I have this notion of who I am, what can I write about and what I can't write about and it blocks me - am I competent enought to write about X? When I write in English it's easier to start something from the scratch.