So, you decided to become a front-end provider: a practical guide for the growth of a novice developer.

The development of frontend over the past few years has seen a huge leap in development. JavaScript continues to widen its gap from other languages ​​as the most popular on Github , and a front-end developer job vacancy is gaining popularity every year. And it is not surprising that with the increasing popularity of the language, we are seeing a significant increase in the number of promising programs for studying frontend technologies, textbooks, accelerated courses and other things. Such a cycle is natural for any rapidly developing industry, and it happens as follows:

• There is a huge demand for front-end developers. Companies are trying to find competent people and they pay a lot of money.
• Other companies see this requirement, and create educational resources to help people start a career. They offer solutions that in a short time will teach you web development, which ultimately will lead to success.
• This approach is attractive to many people. Express courses and online training resources are sold as hot cakes. This area has quickly become a multi-billion dollar industry.

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The end result is a huge “pool” of under-trained personnel. Most of the students of such courses leave with a small portfolio of the site and a few javascript demos. They lack in-depth knowledge in the industry that would allow them to solve real-world problems that professional developers face every day.

The purpose of the article is not to reduce the benefits of these training courses to a minimum. I myself am a self-taught developer and studied before the advent of these courses, and I am sure that my life would be much easier if these resources were available to me when I started. They are a great way to embark on your career path and begin your learning process. However, they are only the beginning of a career.

Well, now what?

For those of you who recently completed one of these programs, and are now part of an ever-growing “pool” of novice developers, you can ask yourself - what now? With so many options for learning basic skills, I would like to take a look at some of the next steps in moving from a developer junior to a working middle level.

Here are a few things that helped me bridge the gap between the first days of my training and becoming a competent and productive developer:

read books

To gain a deep understanding of front-end languages ​​(JavaScript, CSS, and HTML), it’s not enough to read educational materials — you must read books. At the very beginning of my training, I remember reading Javascript Templates without the slightest idea - why they are required. But, in the process of learning, the terms in the book began to make sense. I used the described techniques as a reference, which ensured that I wrote the code correctly. After a while, I was able to fully understand the book, and even could formulate my opinion on some of the positions of the author of the book.

To consolidate the skills, I would advise to read more Eloquent Javascript , SMACSS and HTML and CSS: Creating and designing web applications ; but don't stop at that.

Attend mitapes

Mitapas serve as a great reminder that you are not alone. Share your experiences with colleagues by visiting meetings to learn more about web development. At first, you may not feel comfortable, but the secret is that developers are always ready to share their experience, and almost everyone was in your position at one time. So look for mitaps by your profile, visit, listen and feel free to ask questions. In the end, after some time, things that were not clear to you will begin to make sense.

Open source

This can be challenging for all levels of developers, but if you are developing for the web, I can almost guarantee that you are using open source software. Open source software is software that you can freely use, share and make changes to anyone. So where to start? Think about the tool you are using - say ... JQuery or Bootstrap , and start by searching for tasks on Github . Is there something that you think can be improved? Create a task, or, better yet, submit your changes. The worst thing that can happen is that your changes can be rejected. But more importantly, you get real feedback.

Work for novice developers, internship, hybrid role

This may seem obvious, but the important thing to remember is to keep all options open. Finding a job as a junior developer, or doing an internship that will be worth it, is difficult. Remember that getting a job is important, but if you are working as a junior developer or trainee, make sure that there is a clear career growth. There are many good companies that are eager to teach and grow their junior staff, but many others would be happy to keep them as workhorses that do the work that others don’t want to do - for them cheaper labor is more important than the growth of the next generation of developers .

Another option is when you are in search of work for a hybrid role. So, one of my first jobs as a developer was a web producer. Which meant that sometimes I had to add something in Wordpress, and sometimes I wrote simple new features for an existing site. It was not very interesting, but it was the easiest way to start working as a full-fledged developer.

Start your project

I want to emphasize that solving real problems of your own project is absolutely the best way to become an excellent developer. Instead of fighting the unknown, you can work towards solving specific problems.

The first lines of code I wrote were the result of participating in the Startup Weekend with a friend who had the idea to create an employee suggestion box app . This process was terrible, but both of us had a clear idea of ​​what our application should do. Therefore, I hardkodil and hurry, as long as he did not earn as we wanted. It was a messy process and, to be frank, the source code was terrible, but I learned a lot of new things in a short period of time. Working with real clients was also hard, we had to manage their expectations, and on the other hand, a third-party project without clients, where the uptime does not matter. After starting this business after 8 months, I was ready to leave my first full-time job.

Never stop learning

I hope these items will help speed up your learning, but they are by no means holistic or all-encompassing. Incredibly, there are constant changes in the development of front-end technologies, so you should never stop your training. Regardless of how many books you read, mitapov visited, or created projects, the learning process should continue, if you want, to remain a competent developer with relevant knowledge.

There are a huge number of opportunities to develop and a huge number of people fighting for the same job that you are looking for. But if you stick to all the points listed here, you will surely recommend yourself as a highly qualified developer and succeed in your career.

Finally

I wrote this article, because I empathize with young developers. I started my career working in the film industry with zero developer experience. At his whim, he moved to Taiwan where he worked as a copywriter. I already started to move away from web development before I took part in a contest with a friend, as a lead developer. After that, I managed to get several contracts for our project before getting my first role as a pseudo-developer. The last few years I have been working in Shopify, where I constantly try to improve my knowledge in my field. Now I hold a post of the leading front-end developer. I say this because I want to note that my path was not as smooth as it may seem now. It was a few years when I felt that I had no idea what I was doing. Only with sufficient perseverance, I understood things that I did not understand.