Most Common Mistakes That Developers Should Avoid
Tags: webdev, programming
Published: 2020-11-04 07:25:19

Today, we all know the importance of a website or web app for a business. Web application development has evolved from serving static HTML pages to totally dynamic, complex business applications. There are lot of development platforms available to transform simple static HTML pages into interactive applications. Whereas, development environments catch and fix mistakes that early developers battled with usually. On the way of becoming a skilled developer, several mistakes can be made. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced web developer, you must know some common mistakes that most of the developers make. It just takes one silly mistake to collapse your code. It not only affects the functioning of code but also causes a big loss to enterprise for which a project is built. So you must be aware of the common mistakes in web development. Here we’ve curated some common mistakes, let us have a look.

#Most Common Mistakes That Developers Should Avoid-
**1. Depending On Website Builders Tool-**
These days, most of the companies offer tools to ease the website development with simple drag and drop features. But, it causes an issue in the backend.  With each design decision there is multiple lines of code which slowers the website with time, and this causes performance issues and impact critical functionalities. If you have less time for coding, you can purchase templates at less cost, and you’ll get various responsive and cross-browser compatible templates that are ready to serve your purpose. You just need to include content prior to launching the website. Rather than using website builder tools, it is good to use platforms that offers content management services such as WordPress or Joomla. Aside from seamless hosting of a website, it will serve you various themes that match the purpose of your website.

**2. Use Of Outdated HTML-**
Developers who started coding in the starting days of HTML may have the habit of using lots or spans and ‘&nbps’s that increases code lines and also causes layout issues in updated browsers like Microsoft Edge. So upgrade your knowledge about the latest technologies and use the latest markup elements like font or center that will ease your job and cleans the code that compiles to the latest industry standards. So concentrate on using HTML to describe your content and use the latest features of CSS3 to design content’s layout.

Also know the best web development trends and technologies for 2020 at- Best web development trends and technologies for 2020

**3. Incomplete Input Validation-**
It is important to validate user input on the client and server side. We all know the sage advice “do not trust user input” but nevertheless, mistakes coming from validation happen all too often. Common impact of this mistake is SQL Injection that is in OWASP Top 10 years after year. Keep in mind that most of the front-end development frameworks provide out-of-the-box validation rules which are easy to use. Also, major back-end platforms uses simple annotations to ensure that submitted data are adhering to expected rules. Implementing validation might be time consuming but it should be a part of your coding practice.

**4. Ignoring Cross-Browser Compatibility-**
Those days were gone, when only the internet browser was used to browse the websites. These days, there are lots of browsers available- Firefox, Chrome, Safari are just some of them. These browsers prefer to access sites. So, as a developer, it’s your responsibility to ensure that website looks perfect for all desktop/mobile browsers. In any case, your website don’t work appropriately in your user’s browser, they may lose interest in your website. To avoid all this, make use of cross browser compatibility tools. Also check whether there are any functional issues in any of the browsers and debug those issues in real-time.

**5. Bloated Responses-**
There is a high chance that your web page can be full of high-quality images that has heavy file size. The Javascript and CSS files are quite huge so the source code can be long and complex too. To avoid this, use minimalistic programming techniques, libraries to simplify the program. Careful refactoring is a way to modify the source code of program while keeping the functionality as it is. Always use compressed images with the help of online tools.

Also know- 7 Best Advanced CSS Tricks That Saves Your Time.

**6. Not Ready To Scale Software Product-**
In this modern world of rapid development, startup accelerators, and instant global reach of great ideas  is a common goal for most of the organizations. Due to this pressure, sometimes good web development teams often ignores certain issues. Generally, most of the time, scaling is taken for granted. MVP concept is great but keep it too far, and you’ll have big problems. Sadly, Choosing a scalable database and web server and isolating all application layers on scalable servers isn’t sufficient.

There are numerous details you have to consider if you want to avoid rewriting important parts of your application later that turns into a significant  issue. Consider that you choose to store uploaded profile pics of users directly on the web server. This is a good solution- files are quickly accessible to the application, file handling methods are available in each development platform and you can use serve these images as a static content, that implies less load on application.

When your application grows, you need to use more than one web servers behind a load balancer. Despite the fact that you pleasantly scaled your database storage, session state servers, and web servers, your application scalability falls due to profile pictures. So you want to implement file synchronization service to ensure that files are spread across web servers. Basically, to avoid the problem, you just need to use a shared file storage location, database or other remote storage solution. 

**7. Using Non-Responsive Design-**
Know more at- [https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/most-common-mistakes-that-developers-should-avoid/]