Trying To Learn A Young Language, Using A Tutorial That's More Than A Year Old

When you ask a shopping assistant for coding help and it actually delivers! Rufus here is like that one Stack Overflow answer that doesn't start with "Why would you even want to do that?" The absolute madlad is out here dropping React tutorials in the Super Glue section. Sure, it warned us it "may not always get things right," but then proceeds to nail a perfect React component tutorial complete with code snippets. Meanwhile, my team's senior devs ghost me for three days when I ask how to center a div.

The GUI framework is clearly "Closing Bracket Hell 2.0". Nothing says modern interface design like nesting so many parentheses, curly braces, and square brackets that your code looks like it's falling down stairs. The indentation is just a formality at this point. Somewhere in there is a button that says "Hello World" but you'll need an archaeology degree to find it. This is the kind of code that makes syntax highlighters question their career choices.

OH. MY. GOD. The absolute TRAUMA of modern frontend development captured in one image! 😱 On the left, we have the React ecosystem pointing a BAZILLION packages at us like we're being held hostage in dependency hell. React-router-dom, TypeScript, Axios, Tailwind, and twenty other packages just SCREAMING at you to install them before your project can even render "Hello World." It's like being at a buffet where you MUST eat everything or the chef gets offended! And then there's Angular on the right - just standing there... menacingly... with its all-in-one framework. One download and you're set, but at what cost to your SOUL?! This is why frontend developers have eye bags deeper than the node_modules folder. Our package.json files have more dependencies than I have emotional issues - and that's saying something! 💀

Someone's got a hot take about React being "the worst web framework," and the React devs are standing outside like concerned parents shielding their children from profanity. The irony? React isn't even a framework—it's a library. But try explaining that distinction at a tech meetup and watch everyone's eyes glaze over faster than a useEffect with missing dependencies. The beauty here is that React devs have heard every criticism imaginable: "It's too complicated!" "JSX is ugly!" "Why do I need 47 dependencies for a button?" Yet they remain unfazed, quietly building SPAs while the framework wars rage on. Whether you call it a framework or library, whether you love it or hate it—tomato, tomato. The React ecosystem keeps chugging along with its 200MB node_modules folder regardless.

Nothing says "I'm a developer with commitment issues" quite like this sticker pack. VSCode for when you want an editor that's somehow both lightweight and RAM-hungry. ReactJS because you enjoy rewriting your components every six months when the API changes. Rust for when you need to tell everyone at the coffee shop that you care about memory safety. PHP because legacy code never dies, it just smells that way. GitHub because where else would you store the 47 half-finished side projects you'll never complete? Ubuntu for when you want Linux without the street cred. JavaScript because you've accepted that type coercion is just life's way of keeping you humble. And finally, the Go gopher – the mascot that reminds you that simplicity is great until you need generics.

The dream: "I'll use Flutter and write my app once for all platforms!" The reality: You end up writing it twice anyway because something always breaks on either Android or iOS. The bell curve shows that the average developers (the 68% in the middle) smugly believe cross-platform tools save time, while both the complete novices and the battle-scarred experts (the 0.1% on both ends) know the painful truth. Cross-platform frameworks are basically the tech equivalent of those "one size fits all" clothing items that somehow manage to fit nobody correctly.