This article is reprinted from: www.zhangxinxu.com/life/?p=811

It is more important to read some articles about technology humanities, value orientation and technology world outlook than to simply learn one or two technologies. The improvement of vision and cognition often determines your future height. At least for me, the wisdom of those who came before me when I was younger has helped me grow up. I think it’s time to feed back what I’ve learned to today’s young people.

Technological worldview

With the increase of years of working and the accumulation of technology, our knowledge and view of technology will form a set of their own world view, like a safe technology sandbox, you are inside, you have the skills that you are comfortable with, you have years of accumulated experience.

This is a spontaneous process, just like grabbing a random person by the roadside, who will definitely have his own cognition and view of the world without deliberately thinking about this problem, but in the process of growing up, the world outlook is gradually formed. It is the same in the field of technology, but the world in everyone’s mind is different. The world of frogs in the well is a deep well, and the world of birds in the sky is heaven and earth.

The formation of a stable world view is a sign of our technological maturity, but it often becomes a bottleneck that limits our further growth.

Exclusivity of mature technology

When our worldview of technology stabilizes, we naturally reject other areas of technology, especially those in the same area, and this is called technology exclusivity.

This exclusivity is human nature, or animal nature, embedded in the body. When you’re in a safe, comfortable sandbox, you feel safe by rejecting anything that might disrupt your world.

For example, Angular was first introduced, and some people who are familiar with Angular use rejected Vue and React products, which led to a war of words.

Understandable, human nature. I sometimes feel the same way myself. For example, I’m a big fan of native CSS, not Sass, Less, etc.

But sticking to your own small, stable world of technology can limit your growth.

All rivers run into sea

We need to look at the web front-end technology with a more humble and inclusive mindset, so that your technology depth and breadth can be better than others, and your technology world view can be expanded from a deep well to the world.

In the world of martial arts, each martial arts skill can be seen as a kind of technology, usually the peak of martial arts is often a comprehensive person, Linghu Chong, Zhang Wuji, Yang Guo are so. In this world, there is reason, even if the dross, you know where the dross, can also expand your cognition, increase your knowledge.

We learn front-end technology should be the same, do not learn their own technology and framework is the first in the universe, what other technologies and frameworks are the mentality; Don’t resist being aware of new technologies and trends, and don’t be afraid to upend your established worldview.

For example, there are a lot of newcomers who started out learning Vue, and a lot of them are really good at it. It’s hard not to have a Vue first in the universe, and something like Angular is shit. This is a terrible mindset. To succeed in technology, you have to be humble. What Angular does, what it’s good about, what it’s bad about, you have to learn from it, both good and bad. However, if you remain humble and deeply understand the technology you think is “bad”, the essence can give you inspiration, the dregs can let you know where Vue design is good, can improve your existing technical level.

In a few years, there will probably be another Wue framework. People who have been living on Vue for years will reject this new thing, that’s for sure. If the Wue framework is not consistent with the technical philosophy you have developed over the years, it is even more irrelevant. This mentality is also very bad, almost no different from the closed qing Empire. Your mind must be open and inclusive, willing to accept new things, and think deeply about the reasons for its birth, its value, and whether I can integrate or supplement my existing technology. That way, you’ll be able to keep up with The Times and broaden your technological worldview. Otherwise, we will certainly lag behind others.

Don’t let a mature worldview limit your development. Remember the old saying, “All rivers run into the sea.” That way, over the course of a 40-year career, you can continue to evolve, grow, and become a technical influencer.

In fact, openness, tolerance and humility are not only used for personal growth, but also for team growth. Take team communication as an example, even if one side is an unknown small factory and a small team, the other side is a large factory and a large team, there is also value of communication, but also worth learning, there is a difference can be learned. Many front-end engineers join mature teams of large companies right after graduation and have no idea what a small company is like. At most, they have heard about it on paper, but have not seen it with their own eyes. Through field communication, it will certainly help broaden the cognition of such technical personnel. In addition, small teams often have a good implementation and practice of newer technology, because the concerns are not so much; There will also be many creative ideas worth borrowing. The collision of different ideas can produce different sparks, three people must have my teacher, no matter what time, should remain humble and studious, the road of technology can go higher and farther.

Inclusive in a broader sense

Humility and tolerance can be much broader. Many technologists also live in a narrow world of what is right and wrong about technology.

The teacher of circuit theory in my university gave us his last class before he retired, and at the end of the last class, he talked to us about the understanding of science unrelated to the course.

The teacher’s point was this:

“Any theory that supports itself is science!”

For example, the theory of Traditional Chinese medicine, for example, the theory of Yin and Yang, if these theories can be justified, we can consider it as science.

It is estimated that some people will turn up their noses at the above words, and Chinese medicine is really science TM heck! Please remember the “tolerance” of this article! We don’t have to be obsessed with the literal meaning. It actually leads us to look at things from different angles and in different ways. Do not stick to their own narrow world view cognition, jump out to look at, with a more philosophical perspective, your understanding of the world will be more abundant.

Back to technology, LET’s take CSS as an example:

It’s not unusual for A CSS developer to email me with an understanding or opinion of some style presentation and ask me if I’m right. My answer to all of them is, “If your understanding and phenomena are consistent, then your understanding is correct!”

Even if the questioner’s understanding is different from the so-called CSS specification, I wouldn’t say their understanding is wrong. How can there be so much right and wrong? A specification is called a box. You understand it as a box. Any questions? No problem! The specification says that the floating element is out of the flow of the document, you don’t think it’s out of the flow, is that a problem? No problem, you just have to explain yourself! We don’t have to stick to norms.

Everyone’s inner world is different, and we have different views on things. Therefore, we should not arbitrarily criticize others in accordance with our own technological world view. Instead, we should treat others’ understanding with a more tolerant attitude, and maybe we can get a lot of enlightenment and inspiration from them.

The reason for the so-called technological debate is that we are locked in a narrow world view of technology. There is a line between right and wrong, and if it is not on this line, it is wrong. I will argue with you to make you agree.

No, our perception and view of the world must not be so simple and narrow!

Advise others

As a Follower of Taoism, I prefer to let nature take its course, trace its origin and do nothing. Whether in the real world or in the technological world, this kind of thinking deeply influences one’s cognition and behavior.

For example, focus on basic technology, focus on raw details, and promote native features. Take CSS for example. As mentioned above, I am not a fan of CSS precompiled languages such as Sass and Less, which is not in line with my original technological worldview. However, many years ago in my elder people learn the “open, inclusive” mentality, let me still effort to learn and understand them, is not exclusive, even translated the Chinese document of Stylus, indeed found worth learning place, for example, CSS variable, this is very helpful for project management, for example module introduction, etc., And then the other features are optional, so I don’t use them at all.

To sum up, although I do not recommend it and reject it in my heart, I am not stubborn and open-minded. I want to learn and understand it, find its good places and make use of them. At the same time, I insist on my own ideas and try my best to be original.

Now CSS also supports native var() variables, Sass, Less, etc. There is no reason to use them.

Some time ago, LuLu UI was open source. Some people said that they don’t use any jQuery stuff. This is a typical mentality of thinking that it is bad and outdated. In fact, the jQuery API has infiltrated the DOM standard; before(), after(), prepend(), append() and other new DOM methods are all derived from the jQuery API. Fortunately, the people involved in web standards are willing to absorb good design.

Final conclusion

Always remain modest, inclusive, willing to accept and understand various or old, or new, or similar, or hostile technology, avoid its dross, take the essence, constantly improve and expand their core technology world view, in the field of technology to continue to climb. Remember this saying: all rivers run into sea.

I wish all of you here can go out of your own style in the field of technology in 5 years, come on!