How to become a front-end developer!
Recently, some people approached me asking for advice on how to become get started as a front-end developer.
With its ever changing technologies and frameworks, it can be quite difficult and overwhelming starting out in the field of front-end development.
Front-end vs Back-end vs Full Stack:
As a beginner, you might wonder which area of web development to pursue. If you’re not 100% sure which one to follow then I recommend you read this blog post on how to become a full stack developer.
If you’re already sure about front-end development, go ahead and read on.
Front-end development skills needed:
When starting out in front-end, you might not be sure where to start. There are so many options available not only programming language-wise, but regarding tools, frameworks, and technologies as well.
Here are 8 tips to help you to become a better front-end developer:
1. Plan your projects:
The first mistake and surprisingly very common even with senior developers is that most of us don’t plan.
It’s boring, we don’t know how to plan and we feel that it’s not our job.
Good planning can help you to:
- save you a lot of time
- reduce stress when the deadline is approaching
- comfortably finish on time everyday
2. Be Proactive:
There is nothing worse then telling your client or boss, that things are taking longer than expected and that the project won’t be delivered on time.
Proactively highlighting any roadblocks or delays is a very powerful way to keep everyone happy.
It’s ok if things are taking longer than initially planned, but it’s not ok to keeping this for yourself.
Other reasons why to be proactive:
- it makes you look more professional
- it boosts your credibility
- it helps to build a trust
3. Be curious:
I believe that one of the most important attributes on this list is being curious.
New tools, plugins, techniques and languages are being released almost every day.
It is very important that you stay open to all the new things and will make an effort to explore and understand them.
4. Invest in your skills:
Front-end development and everything related to it is just a skill and any skill, believe it or not is learnable.
You will need to invest in yourself in order to grow. I don’t mean spending money on expensive courses, seminars or books, I am more thinking about investing your time.
There is no short-cut to success and researches show that it takes around 10000 hours to master a skill, that’s around 4 years practicing 40 hours a week.
5. Don’t say YES to everything:
But saying yes to everything can eventually turn against you and you will end up working for less, being under the pump and stressed out.
Carefully evaluate what are the project requirements and align that with your skills. Also be sure to ask which browsers you need to support.
There is nothing wrong in highlighting which parts of the project will need a senior assistance or will need to be left out of the project scope.
6. Don’t say NO to everything:
Contradictory to the previous point, but also important attribute of a highly effective front-end developer is learning something new on every project.
Each project is a great way to implement a feature which you are not familiar with or you do something new for the first time.
7. Find a mentor:
You are keen to learn, but not sure where to start? What should you learn next? How to implement this or that?
Find someone with more experience than you, someone who is keen to help you to grow.
Your mentor should be someone who you respect, someone who you would like to be like. Someone who can teach you how to code and what to avoid doing.
8. Stay active:
That’s why it’s vitally important that you look after your body the same way as you take care of keeping your markup nicely organised and commenting everything you do.
Helpful sources for front-end development news:
- CSS Weekly
- HTML5 Weekly
- JavaScript Weekly
- Responsive Design Weekly
- Sidebar.io
- Web Design Weekly