Music as an analogy for complicating things

November 2, 2016 - By

I loved the post How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016! There’s no hyper-engineering like in front-end web development. I think we can make an analogy with music.

This song is The Ramone’s 1976 classic Blitzkrieg Bop.

It’s familiar, catchy, and four chords. You could only hear it once, and probably still hum it a week later.

Compare to this randomly chosen song by Steve Vai, playing a triple neck guitar. He’s one of the most technically adept guitar players in the world. I’ve set the link to start at 3m and 45s in, which is where I randomly clicked to see if this would be a good example to contrast by.

What you’re hearing is a dizzying array of notes that make a lot of sense to a small audience. It’s probably a fascinating scale that’s flying way over my head, barely sounding like music. I’m still impressed and entertained, but I couldn’t listen to this kind of stuff all day (no offense of course, it’s a matter of taste. Ramone’s aren’t favs either, and this is all way beside the point).

It’s maybe unfair to compare a simple song to the middle of a solo, but that’s how I feel about web development today. Maybe it’s a helpful comparison. Some people like technically complicated things, that’s ok. I’m not saying it’s wrong. Everything is great. You’re fine. There is a time, place, and audience for this kind of music and really byzantine front-end setup—it’s not always, everywhere and for everyone, but the need exists.

Thank a triple neck guitar equivalency front-end developer today.

Now play both songs at the same time and build some websites.

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This post was written by ArleyM