Sorry, a what now?
I didn't really know what Dark Souls was (other than a computer game), although I had at least heard about it. Then lockdown 1.0 happened and it was on offer, so I tried it out.
Essentially, Dark Souls is an extremely difficult computer game that has you doing the same fighty-fighty stuff over and over until you master it and can move on. You play as some sort of fighting/thieving/magic person and you have to battle loads of monsters in a world ravaged by something. Oh, and you lose stuff every time you die. Oh, and everybody is either crazy or miserable. But sure, there are better explanations out there, if you're interested.
Honestly though, the lore and setting are quite cool but I'm terrible at remembering those sort of details! And I was really into into it, for a while at least.
Ahh you think you're different? That you can handle it? Yes, I remember that feeling. For I was the same.
Crestfallen Merchant, Dark Souls
So... Web development?
Obviously, this is exactly like modern front-end web development.
Well maybe not at first glance, but if you are involved in the web world in any form, I'm sure you are aware of how fast things move. There is always something new to learn, or some hot new better way of doing things. Mastered a framework? Unfortunately, that framework is now obsolete/non-maintained/gone up a major version/uncool and you should be doing it
this way instead. This loop felt like
levelling up, even if only when reflecting back on how far you might have come.
It's non-stop and, at times, overwhelming. But that's what makes it interesting, and often exciting! For a long time I've been able to keep up, and I believed it was my responsibility as a web developer to keep an eye on things, learn x and use y. And for a long time, it was enjoyable!
But this is where, for me, it starts to become a "Souls" game... The fun goes. After seeing the 1000th article about why I should be learning React with Typescript and GraphQL I pretty much checked out. Sounds suspiciously like a thing called “burnout”, but it didn't feel like what I'd read about burnout. I still liked web development – it's just that JavaScript things lost their appeal. For those in the know, this was my “Seath the Scaleless” moment in Dark Souls land (the second time, not the first time!).
Moving on
Anecdotally, most people that start Dark Souls don't finish it. It doesn't mean it wasn't worth the ride. As there are many beautiful and deep moments in Dark Souls, running the web dev race has been good fun and I've learned a lot.
This comparison that ends in me quitting Dark Souls doesn't mean I have decided to get out of the web game (so to speak). I now appreciate what I can focus on and what I do care about in this industry. There is still plenty of levelling up to be done, but my viewpoint has shifted. Mastering the craft doesn't mean playing with every new tool that comes out. It doesn't mean being at the cutting edge of things. It's about being liberated from the rat-race of being a “React dev” or a “Svelte dev” or a “Vue dev” or a “Tailwind evangelist”. It's about fundamentals.
Learning JavaScript best practices; is JavaScript even needed?; what are the accessibility implications?; is performance going to be affected?; am I using the appropriate HTML elements?; What is the most efficient way of doing this with CSS? What about no JavaScript users and older browsers?
These are the questions that I find more interesting these days. Even if I don't make it to the end of the game senior developer level, asking these types of questions will allow me to be the best developer I can be. I genuinely believe that this approach can make any developer framework-agnostic. This may or may not sound obvious, but if you are neck-deep in front-end newsletters and blogs then it can be easy to forget.
To be fair, I think this realisation has come with both the benefit of experience and a global pandemic. Life is too short to be forcing yourself to spend evenings learning things that you are told you need to learn right now, when, in the real world, you really don't.
Aaaand I think that is as far as I can take this comparison. It seemed like a good idea at the time 🙂
What’s wrong? Get a bit of a scare out there? No problem. Have a seat and get comfortable. We’ll both be hollow before you know it.
Crestfallen Warrior, Dark Souls