I complain here and everywhere about the insane complexity in modern-day web app dev.
The truth is that, after you learn the 20 new tools/technologies you'll need to become semi-competent in only one stack, it won't seem like such a massive shift anymore.
I think competition is not that fierce -- honestly speaking as I can -- but that's for corporate jobs, etc.
And you _have_ to be competent or good or really good if you're older.
Else, you're just going to sound...like you sound -- old and washed up.
Not saying you are, or I am, but once you're 25+, if you bring the 'Get off my lawn' vibe, your 27-yo manager-to-be is gonna smell it a mile away, and he's gonna be feeling awkward enough already.
So I think you can be fine, but you gotta actually know what you're doing, and you have to get/be modern.
But it's more that if you come in and say that MySQL and PHP is good enough for everything, you're going to sound washed up. It might be true, but it's not good team chemistry when everyone wants to do one thing and one person keeps pulling them back. You don't even have to be 40 for this; 26 is "old" enough.
xD
I'm a 43 yo autodidact + BS EE/CS. Haven't had a problem except for resume gaps when doing side-hustles and unnamed startup consulting for too long, HR at shops raise their eyebrows. When it gets to in-person interviewing, I may have a leg over with ~10 years of neanimorphism, look somewhat between a neohippie artist and an idle trustfunder (definitely neither, LOL!), and (obnoxious bragging here) date college students which might help with youthful-seeming attitude.
Oh and worked on nuclear reactor simulators, infosec research, compilers, industrial mining embedded systems, HPC biomedical informatics, and just about every permutation of AWS/hybrid cloud startup scaling (Prod Eng/SRE). Rust, Haskell, C, Ruby, TS/Elm, and so on.
There's always learning, new approaches, and shifting standards to handle.
The more you know, the more you know that you don't.
Buying into one's own ego / being the office jerk are the biggest enemies in high-productivity tech. Relentlessly resourceful go-givers tend to win out in the long-term as the most valuable employees because the big name celebrity rockstar whatever tends to write checks their hubris can't cash.
As a frontend dev, I don't think complexity is the issue. I _love_ the new tools at my disposal and am grateful that time has done away with many issues we used to have, such as poor cross-browser compatibility.
Rather, I think the main problem has to do with layers. The bottom layers - the hardware, the kernel - they just work. It's the topmost layers that are the problem - there's a constant battle with dependencies, configurations and tools.
I'm sure that a lot of this frustration would go away if people weren't forced to do yak-shaving every time they wanted to develop an app.
A LOT of companies change the whole stack just to copy the latest gimmick they’ve seen somewhere else.
Devs need to be constantly relearning how to do basic things, so you either chose some tech and hope it gets popular, or you get to know a lot of frameworks only superficially, which leaves a lot of the internet broken.
SPAs aren't a fad anymore; instead, they're the norm.
Web development over the past 3 years has majorly stabilised compared to the last 10 as a whole.
Want to work on the frontend? React. It's everywhere and can't be considered 'just a fad' in 2021.
Backend? Wrap your head around REST and you'll be fine with most languages (C# with .net core is very common, although often underpaid in my experience).
It might be true, I’m definitely not an expert, I do embedded in C mostly, but I’m always curious to learn the stacks used in each company I get in. Everywhere I go, there’s a completely different one, and all of the leads talk to me about moving to something shinny soon.
My last two places would implement new stuff but in very isolated areas and certainly never "the whole stack".
Anyway, C# is still very relevant, but it depends on location. In my city, it's huge, in others, not so much. I tend to stick to back end work rather than front end work. Front end's flavor of the day changes way too often, and I find it to be tedious work. Back end is much less reliant on external libraries and therefore doesn't change as rapidly, and to me is much closer to actual programming.
So in summary, talk to your prior colleagues, stick to back end work (if that's your bag). Keep on truckin'
>In my city, it's huge, in others, not so much
About your skills, There are many new trends in tech in last decade. Since you have worked withe web, I will suggest you to start with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript's new features which you may already be knowing.
Start learning server side js. Node.js is bit confusing if you are old folks but see some tutorials and follow them, start with light framework like Express and make small app. The benefit of node.js is you can share many modules at both server and client sides if needed[though beware of it].
Alternatively if you want to stick to PHP, the easiest will be to start with codeigniter and when you feel likes getting grip move to Laravel. Laravel is in great demand. Learn to use it with docker.
Building successful solutions and helping to evolve a business is inherently more valuable skill to the guy who signs a checks.
If he is smart enough he is less care about technology you know at this given moment but more about you passion, inspiration and ability to help the business grow and learn new fad along the way if needed.
If you're facing overzealous interviewers nitpicking your coding skills or short cycled in forcing you to solve stupid puzzles in record short time - it is likely there is a disconnect within this organization on what is really important and you'll be wasting your valuable time agreeing to work there.
[1]https://starecat.com/the-technical-interview-vs-the-actual-j...
Your skills are very relevant at least with WP. Are you not looking for WP jobs ?
Do not doubt yourself based on your interview performance. If it’s something you care about and you have the time, do your test prep properly: big O, tree traversals, etc. etc. etc.
I’ll add that as a primarily functional programmer who’s applied for multi-paradigm jobs, I’d say a lot of the answers I’ve been expected to give were quite absurd.
Algorithms is one way of achieving this goal (another question if it’s good way).
Since CSS knowledge (and honestly wordpress) is not a big deal (you don’t have to be smart to learn them) — make sense that interviewers asking you a lot of stuff.
Can you complete projects of at a minimum, small size?
Then, yes.