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

• understanding and implementing clean and scalable UI design is an overlooked skill as a front-end developer.

• your front-end code also needs to be well structured such that the components are reusable

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. 🛠

dev tools

• 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 😄