WAYS TO BECOME A GOOD FRONT END DEVELOPER
Tags: newbie, frontend
Published: 2020-07-20 12:59:49

1. Learn HTML & CSS. And become good at it.
I guess there’s no way around it. Learn HTML & CSS. Why? Because of the basics matter.

There are all kinds of different online courses available on how to get started with HTML and CSS. First things first. Sign up at Online courses like Coursera or Team Treehouse. After finishing some initial courses, go ahead and create some static web pages and iterate over and over again.

I also recommend developing some small UI elements for practicing your newly learned HTML & CSS skills. Codepen.io is a great playground for that. Browse other people’s projects and participate in the community there.

2. Build things.
Playing around with (small) UI elements is one thing. Creating an actual landing page or website is something different. At some point, you will eventually start using JavaScript snippets.

Don’t forget to challenge yourself by building the first responsive elements.

So there’s only one way to become better at what you’re doing: Keep learning, keep building.

Putting these two together, build to learn! There’s no better way to learn than to get your hands dirty. You’ve probably heard this a hundred times by now, but it is for a good reason why this is the advice most often dished out.

3. Read, read, read
I guess there’s no way around this. Believe it or not. Your reading skills greatly influence your path to becoming a great front-end developer. Especially when starting out, there’s a lot of reading required. Why?

At first, you’ll probably read a lot of articles, guides, and manuals on how to do different things. You’ll also start reading other people’s code.

Or as Adam (UX Lead at CoachUp) would state:

Combine that with a good book like Eloquent JavaScript, and you can up your programming game very quickly.

4. There’s more to front-end development than building a website
If you followed my tips from 1 to 3, you have probably already done a course or have read a lot of tutorials and are now able to throw together a website.

However, that doesn’t equate to being a “front-end developer”. Knowing how to build a website is a very small part of the front-end puzzle.

I apologize if that sounds demotivating. But that’s actually the case.

There is a whole load of topics that you still should learn about. If we consider performance, testing, QA, and many other areas, then you really need to become a deep diver as a front-end developer.

5. Know your tools
As you start your journey with front-end development, you will need to decide on your toolkit and the services you need to make your life easier. Learning about the different tooling options is an important thing. Great tools will help you enhance and automate your front-end development workflow.

There will be an ocean of possibilities but soon enough, you’ll find yourself using certain tools and apps. One of those tools will definitely be the Chrome developer tools. Why? Because you can play with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in real-time and this will give you the immediate feedback you need to learn quickly.
Additionally, node, npm, bower, and many more excellent tools are there to facilitate your daily work. And don’t forget about versioning. 

6. Version control will save your life.
OK, maybe this sounds a bit too exaggerated. But trust me on that. Version control will save you some sleepless nights.

Instead of trying something and having it blow up in your face or hitting command+z a trillion times, you can simply trash your branch and roll back to what was working previously.

So make sure to become an expert at Git.



7. Do not rush.
Along the way, you will ask yourself why you do this and you may want to just stop. It may be tempting to just give up. But don’t. If you’re at that point, I have only one advice for you:

Do. not. give. up.

Set aside one or two hours every other day to learn. Take a lot of breaks and make sure that you really know the basics. And never rush.

The basics form the foundation which will help you get to the next level.

If you feel stuck, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Everyone goes through this phase and having the patience to stick it out will help you come out in the end as a pro in front-end development.

Thanks for spending your time to read this hope it helps you out
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