Guide to stand out as a Front-end Web developer seeking their first job!

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Guide to stand out as a Front-end Web developer seeking their first job!

Hey there! Are you feeling stuck in the crowd? Then I've gotta way out! ๐Ÿš€

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. ๐Ÿ› 

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 ๐Ÿ˜„