As an older developer (46), I stay away from the clusterf%%% of modern front end development.

In the last three or four years, I’ve been going back and forth between C# (.Net Core) using Visual Studio and Javascript (Node), Python, and Go using VS Code. The setup was. 1. Download VS/VS Code 2. Install appropriate extensions .

It makes no sense to me to try to stay up to date with front end development when front end developers are rapidly becoming a commodity with a bunch of boot camp grads. The money isn’t worth it.

I'm the same age. But I am also guilty of old habits when attempting new frameworks or languages. For example, I always want to set up the environment with the least amount of "auto loads" of libraries etc. I do not use NPM. I still play around with new JS libraries by direct downloads from the official websites or Github and always use local copies of .js .css etc. I don't even connect to CDNs for fonts! I want to know all dependencies etc. I am paranoid like that. And this can be exhausting.

Can't agree more. Recently started a personal project in .Net Core + Visual Studio. What a joy. Can't get away from the front-end completely, but I can at least enjoy the backend side immensely.

Have you tried Blazor? I wouldn’t invest time in it personally because I don’t see a market for it, but if I were just doing a side project for the project itself and not to learn a new marketable skill, I would give it a go.