Drew Bell on front-end engineering as a kind of translation
Drew Bell on front-end engineering as a kind of translation
Drew Bell is a front-end engineer at Postlight—a role he describes as “the awkward middle child of the development pipeline”—and one that requires a ton of conversation. In a platonic and pure (albeit heartless) engineering world, perhaps Drew would cheerfully accept designs and specifications and turn them into functioning app experiences that run in a web browser, with nary a peep or question. In the spongy actualities of product development, Drew’s work involves a tremendous amount of communication with many parties—some of it with his coworkers, some of it with future engineers, and much of it with himself.
Front-end development is translating. You’re asked to translate designs from Sketch or Framer or Photoshop to CSS, and you’re asked to translate behavior from InVision or a user story into JavaScript. Like translating a piece of writing, you can’t automate every part of the task. There are idioms and norms that have to be bent to fit the new context.
This isn’t a post about basic communication skills for engineers; it’s more about the patterns of communication that work best when developing in the imperfect world, from the vantage of a specific engineering discipline. Ultimately it’s about listening more intelligently in order to make sure things get done. You should read it!