Front End developers are short in number currently as compared to job
openings. The reason for that is the demand, these days the success of
any application or website heavily relies on good front end UI and UX.
An experienced front end developer with good skills is highly crucial to
deliver a quality product.
The job ratio and market demand of Front End developers have
increased marginally as the field of front End development is becoming
more and vaster. Every six to twelve months a new
technology is introduced in the field of front end development which gains enough popularity to become a norm in the coming years.
So, keeping this in mind a front end developer has to constantly keep
himself updated with new trends and has to keep adding to his skill
set. Thankfully any new skill can easily be obtained nowadays via online
courses, tutorials or certifications. There are numerous
web developer certifications happening at any given time online.
As with time, the more skills a front end developer has up his
sleeves the most likely he is to get better jobs or projects. Although
these skills keep changing for front end developers, some skills are
necessary throughout the industry. Mostly when getting hired, a front
end
developer is evaluated based on the following skills.
13 necessary skills to be a front end developer
1. HTML
The most basic markup language is HTML, without HTML there is no
concept of web development. It is like the basic building block of any
website or web app. Altough most developers initially grasp a good
understanding of HTML. But it is important to learn HTML in depth as
there are some rare tags (eg; “cite”, “opt group”, “acronym”) that most
developers have no idea of.
2. CSS
No front end developer can ever forget their first CSS code, be it as
simple as changing the background color. CSS provides front end
developer an instant joy, as they can see the results of their work
instantly with CSS. Also, CSS has become very powerful with animations
and transitions now. Today a front end developer’s first approach to
fixing any UI bug is through CSS.
3. JavaScript
JS can be termed as the king of scripting languages. As there more frameworks and libraries in
JavaScript
as compared to any other scripting language. Even in pure vanilla form,
Javascript is very powerful and it handles most of the functionalities
of the client side. Needless to say, it is a must skill for front end
developers.
4. JQuery
A lot of event management and transition actions are handled by JQuery in front end development.
JQuery
which is a library of JavaScript provides you some predefined functions
that you can use to implement some key features (eg; hide and show).
Without JQuery, you will have to write these kinds of functions
individually, which is a bummer.
5. JavaScript Frameworks (React, Angular)
There are various Js frameworks which make the life of a front end
developer easy. As they have a lot of key features already builtin in
available for use. One of such is
Angular.
It is a very widely used framework, and many organizations have made it
their number one go to. Javascript has many such frameworks to choose
from.
6. Other front end frameworks (BootStrap)
Front End frameworks are a combination of some HTML, some JS, and a
lot of CSS. They help you in writing less CSS, as they provide some
custom classes that you can use for styling. The most famous and widely
used front end framework is bootstrap. It can be seen in many live
websites. Having knowledge of bootstrap is very important in Front end
development.
7. CSS preprocessing (Sass / Less)
Preprocessors like Sass and Less let you write programming logic
right inside the CSS files. This helps in conditional styling and
defining themes. For example, if you have a color palette that you want
to use throughout your all CSS files, you can define color constants in
one file only and call them on any other file. Preprocessors have become
an organizational standard and must skill.
8. Version control (git)
Obviously when you’re working on a large project with a team then it
is essential to have some kind of version control in place. All major
changes are released in different versions with time. So, it is
essential even for a frontend developer to have the know-how of any
version control manager. Preferably most organizations choose git flow
over any other.
9. Responsive design
A front end developer aims to make responsive design, as the number
of devices that a web app can be accessed from is large. So, it is
important that the app doesn’t break between various browsers and
platforms. To achieve this the front end developer needs to be good at
making a responsive design that serves all or most devices.
10. Testing and debugging
Testing is a crucial part of the development life cycle. In most
scenarios, you will find a front event developer writing the tests
himself. These tests include UI and functionality tests. After a test
fails and output is not what is expected then it is the front end
developer’s job to find and fix that bug as well.
11. Developer tools
There are many extensions available on chrome and Mozilla browser
that a developer can make use of. These developer tools help make the
development process easy and convenient as you can find most of the
required data or help within the browser using these developer tools.
12. Problem Solving
A must skill to have in any field of
programming.
Problem-solving skill is what sets most developers apart from the
ordinary. How quick a developer is able to solve a problem at hand with
the best possible approach tells about the quality of that particular
developer and his work.
13. Creativity
Front end developers are imaginative and creative people. They have a
clear picture in their minds regarding their work even before the work
has started. They know exactly what they want to implement in the
future, and whenever there is any hiccup in the process, creative front
end developers come up with solutions or alternatives before anyone
else.
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