Transcript:
FIVE TIPS TO BECOME A FRONT END DEVELOPER
Hey what’s goin’ on internet,
Its Milkstarz here and today,
I’m going to give you five things for you to think about to become a Front End Developer.
A little background, right now I’m a full stack developer at AT&T with strong passions for UI/UX and mobile development. I've done freelancing for about four years, and now I’m ready to share what I know with you point and pause the music the Internet.
So here we go!
Tip #1: Be pragmatic, not unrealistic.
Internet, listen to me for a sec. We’re starting to live in a world where everybody and their mom is learning to code from a bunch of different places, which by the way, IS AWESOME.
And with that, tons of people are going to create competition for higher status jobs.
You need to start coding with efficiency. It shouldn’t take you 6 seconds to load a 20kb picture of some low quality meme you found on the internet.
As Vince Lombardi once said,
“Practice doesn’t make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect.
Start looking up efficient ways to do the things you’re doing now, look at ways to make your code less redundant!
COUGH COUGH Object Oriented Programming
COUGH COUGHMVC Paradigm
And easier to read for your colleagues. ;)
Tip #2: Do NOT blindly follow the media
You won’t believe how many people I’ve talked to that came up to me and a started a conversation with:
Person: “Hey Malik! I just spent 30 hours playing with [insert framework, or popular language] and I made this cool web app with it.
Me: Oh nice man that’s awesome! What does it do exactly?
Person: “Ummm, well this guy on Medium said it – “
Me: “Stop. Please.”
You need to understand the stack that you’re working with. I hate to sound like every guy who explains web dev, but you really do need to establish a strong foundation in the Holy Trifecta:
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
You should be able to respond when I ask you what a callback or closure is.
You should understand that everything in JavaScript is an object.
Everything.
Understand the stack you’re working with, and you’re gonna be better off than that guy that’s learning that sub-sub-module shooba-doo.js that replaces links with marquees to better optimize the –
You see what I’m saying?
Tip #3: UI/UX is king.
Just so you know, the top companies in the world right now are mostly companies that push customer or user-driven products.
I recently watched a video where they said that the user base for a lot of corporate companies isn’t the 20-28 year old, early adopter group. It’s the 55 to 70 year old parents that just found out that touch screens are a popular thing.
If your users can’t intuitively navigate your app, your application is NOT going to develop a big user base.
I could go on and on about how the little things matter most when creating a UX flow, but the important rule that I always tell people is K.I.S.S:
Keep it sleek, but simple.
Follow that rule and you’ll be a master front end developer in no time.™
Tip #4: Understand how the big picture works together
Now I’m not saying you have to learn every single data structure, and every single algorithm to most efficiently search through a data set here.
All I’m saying is that you should have solid understanding of how each part of the web paradigm works.
This will make it one million times easier when you talk to other members on your team about what they’re working on, and how their work affects yours. And hey, maybe if they ask you a question, you just might have an answer even though that’s not your focus. Now THAT’S how you become a senior developer.
Tip #5: Have patience.
Nobody said the job search would ever be easy. Especially in the tech industry it can be really painful!
You start to feel like you’re just sending your resumes into a black hole where you’ll never ever see it again.
Take your time, prepare for your interviews, and keep learning.
My mom always says,
“If you haven’t found a job yet, it’s just fate’s way of guiding you to the one you’re supposed to be at.”
These have been my five tips on becoming a Front End Developer.
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Until next time, I’ll see you later Internet. PEACE!