No.. it's "watch what the industry is doing and learn it ". Or, admit the front end is now a full specialization that you don't have, and understand you're not qualified until you learn some new tools and akills.
I've been having this argument constantly at work. Everyone loves our SPA, but they still want to be able to hire really cheap front-end devs to do maintenance. Having back-end devs do MVC and designers doing CSS and light interactivity is a totally valid model, but doing SPA requires specialist knowledge.
I understand why business people are reluctant to view front-end as a real engineering discipline from a cost-perspective, but trying to get a SPA for a JSP prices is silly and unrealistic.
Yep, I've fought this fight multiple times. The latest iteration for me has been managers trying to repurpose React devs into React Native ones at a moment's notice. React Native isn't a replacement for years of familiarity with a platform and knowledge of it's quirks and complexities. If anything it's another level of abstraction and an extra layer of complexity to deal with. And I say this as a veteran React dev who is very much in love with it.
