Hey there! Are you feeling stuck in the crowd? Then I've gotta way out! 🚀
There is no alternative to hands-on for succeeding as a developer!
basic must-knows
googling the stuff you don't know
- that's the most basic thing to know first, as a developer you won't be knowing each and every stuff. but you have to develop this skill of googling and learning things by yourself.
The bare minimum
- HTML
- CSS: don't use frameworks or libraries when you are on a learning path
- Pre-processors of CSS like SCSS.
- extremely important: Good JavaScript knowledge
- React
- Optimizing react application
- Writing modular front-end code
- CSS-in-JS
- Wrote libraries in JS? Like your own miniversion of Lodash?
- Knowledge of how different kinds of API works
- State management (damn important!) : ContextAPI or Redux (enough)
now here comes the "standing-out" part
write modular front-end code
typescript
good understanding of javascript has already made you stand ahead of most of the crowd, but to make your game one more level up, go for typescript.
What's typescript? in short: it's strongly typed javascript or javascript with datatypes
why is it good? Simply because it makes development faster and less prone to errors.
most organizations write applications in typescript as it sets a convention for the whole team of developers working on the same product.
Testing
The truth is most of the new front-end devs I have come across have never been through testing.
Read about Jest for detailed knowledge about this particular section
Remember: Anything that reduces your debugging and development time will save $$$ to the company, and hence you will be a good investment for them!
- Test-driven development (TDD): results in better code quality, reduced production bugs, and reduced debugging time. 🛠
javascript bundlers: packs all the dependencies into static content that is renderable by browsers.
examples: webpack or parcel
learn debugging and use tools to debug your code. it's better than doing console.log("here") on every other line.
general advice for any developer starting their journey.
make lots and lots of projects, practice will make you better each day!
have those projects deployed live and also on Github, so that recruiter can actually see your work and can have confidence in hiring you!
stay humble, and friendly with your dev community as peer groups will have a great impact on your learning journey.
don't shy away from teaching things you know and asking things you don't know.
often take part in hackathons (online or offline - it doesn't matter),
worst case: you will learn and have a new project in your portfolio.
best case: you will learn, win and have a new project in your portfolio.
the worst-case scenario is also a part of your upcoming win as it is improving you!
last note.
I wrote this article as a raw and pure form of information I could fetch from my experience. All of them are actionable things you can practically achieve and be a good front-end dev that most of the companies would be pleased to have.
The key rule is: Be consistent and make a LOT of PROJECTS. there's no other way 😄
