Ask HN: Thoughts on switching / changing focus from Mobile to Web development?

3 pointsby batmanforevervor 2 Jahren3 comments

A little about me: I’ve been doing Mobile development professionally, prior to that I was doing backend stuff. In rare cases I’ve done some web dev focused changes but it’s never been the focus of my role.

  For context, I think Mobile development is a great field and I’m not suggesting a switch because I don’t enjoy it, rather I’ve began to find the Mobile field limiting and perhaps it feels too familiar as I’ve been doing it for over 5 years?

 I don’t know enough about mobile or web to make sweeping statements as to what is or isn’t true, rather these are some opinions that I thought might be contributing to this feeling:

* Most mobile screens adopt a similar look and feel - which is understandable but this means broadly speaking once you’ve written screens multiple times, it can feel a little monotonous to do the same patterns, use the same UI components etc. (this is probably also true for web, so perhaps it’s not a great point) * Web is still more ubiquitous than apps - While the walled garden of app stores is great at times, the accessibility of the web is a big win depending on the application. * In the event of layoffs - this is purely speculation but in event of layoffs, web devs appear to be more able to find work, whereas Mobile is more limited as it depends on which companies have an app etc * Since I’m iOS focused at the moment, I’ll mention limited Swift language adoption outside of Apple ecosystems - I recognise that a programming language is a tool… but at times it does feel like Swift is getting all this cool stuff which I can’t use for anything other than Apple ecosystem or rare use cases. * Web seems more vast - I don’t know if that’s a correct statement, but it feels like Web has more depth due to things like hosting, more security issues perhaps… though mobile does have a considerable amount of complexity through devices on older versions of app or OS, limited connectivity, thermal throttling etc

I know a part of this feeling is probably down to a “grass is greener on the other side” mentality, and I know I still have much more to learn in the Mobile domain, but I am genuinely curious as to what others think about a move like this.

Questions: * Has anyone done Mobile then moved over to Web development? * Similarly what about moving from Web to Mobile development? * People say iOS developers earn more than Web, is this true in your experience? money isn’t everything but its good to know at least

Also I recognise I’ve used Web as an umbrella term for many different things, in my mind I’m thinking JS, TS, React, Redux, NextJS, Angular, CSS etc

Thank you for your time.

5 comments

batmanforevervor 2 Jahren

Sorry this ended up formatting badly

solardevvor 2 Jahren

Sorry for the negativity, but I think this is a bad time to switch to web dev, personally. There is still a glut of developers and nobody is going to hire a web dev with no production experience right now :( The sector might never recover, honestly, between all the over-hired and laid-off ex-FAANGers and all the hype (and funding) moving to AI.

That said, if your current job has web developers too, can you help them out a bit and learn on the job, part-time? Shadowing, working on simpler PRs, even just studying their code, etc.? It's not something you should quit your day job for, with these market conditions, but there's nothing wrong with learning gradually on the side. A lot of web work IS repetitive, as you said, and yes, there's a lot of cookie-cutter UX best practices that you implement over and over again. UI work is UI work and the same basic principles apply (especially since most web pages are responsive mobile lookalikes nowadays), so that actually gives you a leg-up over people who have no experience at all. The syntax and frameworks might be different, but many of the principles are similar.

Sure, web dev has some depth, but it's also typically the lowest tier of professional programmers. I don't mean any disrespect when I say that... been doing web dev for like 20+ years... but traditionally it was the one high-paying field where any high school drop-out with a few video tutorials or months of boot camp could get into. (I was one myself!)

So yes, web work is ubiquitous, but web devs are ubiquitous too, and these days many smaller companies use no-code platforms or farm out their work to web agencies that re-use templates. There's not many jobs for higher-skilled web dev anymore. It was different in 2018-2022, especially during covid, but we are currently still in an web dev oversupply and if you switched now you'd just be joining the breadlines. At least in mobile you're part of a smaller niche, instead of competing with the hordes of hungry low-skilled web devs. The easy glory days are long past us.

If I were in your shoes and really wanted to learn on the side, I'd choose one web framework and learn it well (probably React + Next; forget Angular, it doesn't matter anymore, but you can look into Vue and Svelte as alternatives too... but React is where all the jobs are/were). Don't spread yourself too thin trying to learn all the big ones. Add that to your existing resume but don't let go of your mobile skills. That way you wouldn't be an entry-level web dev, but an experienced frontend dev with both mobile + web skills. Bigger companies sometimes need that sort of cross-over talent when they want to make native apps plus web apps/PWAs and try to share code or UI or styles between them, etc.

If you want to do more backend / devops / networking stuff, there's plenty of that too, but presumably you would've had a chance to work on that in the mobile space too. It's common for different frontends to talk to the same backends.

Good luck... sorry for the bad news.

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Edit: Also see https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology/ for a good overview of the landscape.

batmanforevervor 2 Jahren

Thank you so much for this response :)

I really appreciate your insight and honesty into the field.

I’ll stick with Mobile (iOS) for now and I’ll shadow some of the web team at work while also prioritising React + NextJS for any web learning I do outside of work in my spare time.

mileykavor 2 Jahren

[deleted]vor 2 Jahren