DonTheDeveloper Podcast
DonTheDeveloper Podcast
5 WRONG Assumptions About Becoming a Frontend Developer
I’m calling out five big misconceptions about becoming a frontend developer that might be wrecking your progress. I talk about whether you actually need backend skills to land a frontend gig, if you should learn Next.js, and even if you should learn Tailwind. There's more I dive into, so if you're aiming to become a frontend developer, this one's for you.
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If you are trying to become a front-end developer, I'm going to talk about five misconceptions about becoming one that you need to know. There are rumors and there's advice coming from even very large content creators that I think is screwing a lot of people over. So we're going to go over five. The very first one might surprise you, because this is a very popular thing told. But you hear that you need to learn backend skills to be marketable as a front-end developer, and if your gut told you that doesn't make any sense, your gut's right. The problem is that you get people that spread this information.
Don Hansen:It really started with coding bootcamps, to be honest, but a lot of coding boot camps spit out surface level developers, which who kind of new front end, who kind of new back end, but they were never really good with either. But you know, in 2001, or, sorry, 2021. And even before the pandemic, you were able to get positions kind of with surface level knowledge. It's not that you necessarily knew full stack and that's why you were hired. Most positions wanted to hire people that were good at their area of focus, whether it was front end or back end. But the bar has risen for a lot of junior developers now and the only thing that's happening is you are now seeing a lot of developers that have went this full stack path, this templated path, who only have surface level knowledge, who aren't even being considered for interviews because their knowledge is just too surface level in their portfolio showcases that right, because their knowledge is just too surface level and their portfolio showcases that right. If you want to stand out in a front-end position among so many other aspiring developers who think front-end is the easiest to get into and we'll talk about that in a bit you need to be good at front-end. You need to dive deeper into front-end. There are so many niches and so many areas that you could dive deeper into front-end, and so people just suck with CSS or they suck with JS and they jumped into React too quickly and they're just trying to build apps, but they don't really flush out any sort of complex features or anything that requires some deep JavaScript knowledge or anything that requires deep CSS knowledge to build, uh, very impressive layouts. They just they kind of just spit out cookie cutter apps and they just keep doing that with portfolio project after portfolio project after portfolio project. That doesn't make you stand out. So many other people are doing that.
Don Hansen:If you want to be good with front end, dive deep into front and get really good with JS, get really good with CSS, care about semantic HTML, care about accessibility and yes, care about testing. Yes, there are tests on the front end and there are companies that are going to require you to write tests on the front end. So, yes, eventually you do want to dive into React, of course, but a lot of people just have surface level knowledge on the front end and then they're not really getting interviews. Then they think they need to learn back end in order to stand out. Everyone's going through the same Mernstack tutorial and a lot of those tutorials just don't go nearly deep enough. That's why you're not standing out on the front end. Because you're not good at front end, please get good at front end. Because you're not good at front end, please get good at front end. There's so many years to spend to even get decent just decent at a junior level on the front end. People are just skipping it. So the second one is people are jumping into Next way too quickly. First of all, people are jumping at a React way too quickly.
Don Hansen:I always say this I highly recommend, before you even decide to learn React, go through Eloquent JavaScript. It's a free online book. The first six chapters Make sure you understand all the material. You can do the challenges at the back of each chapter, no problems. If you are in that kind of a shape, you're probably ready to finally start learning React.
Don Hansen:A lot of people are not good with JS and they jump into React too quickly and they're able to just copy and paste what tutorials are telling them to do, but they don't really understand what's happening with React because they don't really understand what's happening with JavaScript that they're writing. The foundations are shaky with a lot of people. And then you man. Even in the React docs, I believe they still recommend use Next if you were learning React. That's not terrible advice for some developers, but I highly disagree with that recommendation for junior or aspiring developers especially. Just use Vite. One single command will spin up an entire React application with Vite. Go through their tutorial, spin up a React application and then dive into react.
Don Hansen:But I think it's important to extract your learning with react outside of next. Next has a lot of unique things and a lot of people will. So I think next is really good for experienced front-end developers that don't really want to get good with backend. I think next is a really good tool or to spin up an app very quickly for experienced developers. But it helps to be able to separate what's unique with Next with just building something with React. A lot of people won't do that and even just like coming up with your own way that you're going to set up React Router and how you're going to organize that, how you're going to organize your files in your own React application says a lot about you as a developer and you could develop those conventions based off of building a bunch of crappy organized React apps that just grew and grew and grew and you're like man, I keep going back into this, but now I'm taking longer and longer to find these components and like I don't really have a consistent file structure and I don't really know like where I want to separate certain components. I haven't really gotten that down, but like, these decisions that you eventually develop are really good talking points in an interview.
Don Hansen:Why did you organize it this way? Why did you decide to separate it by types? Why did you decide to separate it by types? Why did you decide to make it a little bit more modular and feature-driven? Right, like. What about? That appealed to you. What went through your mind? Did you encounter any hurdles of as you were trying to scale your React app? Where you're like man, I could do this a lot better and you looked at different tutorials and you chose this. Why? What interests you about this? You should be able to talk about these things. You should be able to talk about your organizational patterns. You should be able to talk about your implementation in junior interviews. Yes, you should. You're not just a code monk. You really have to flesh this stuff out and think through it Again.
Don Hansen:The bar has risen, but this was an expectation before for a lot of different people where you kind of just like built very basic vanilla apps, you try to scale it. It got disorganized and then you learn the next abstraction to then make your app a little bit more organized and scalable and reusable. And like React is awesome for that and reusable. And like react is awesome for that. But when you implement something like next as a junior or aspiring developer, it comes with its conventions that are very opinionated. To next, which is fine, but a lot of companies do not use. Next, most companies where you are going to be working at a react application, do not use Next. And there are some junior developers I don't know where this is coming from, but there are some junior developers that actually believe Next is just plentiful. Tons of jobs for junior developers in Next if they just learn Next. This is why I think the docs of React recommending Next are a bit misleading to junior developers. I don't think they're trying to distinguish. And if they are recommending it for junior developers, I just strongly disagree.
Don Hansen:Build something with React, spin something up with Vite one single command then dive deep into React and build some components with it and then eventually again the bar has risen. Before you didn't really have to get into like any sort of web pack config, but eventually like spin up or set up your own web pack config. I mean, like Vita is fine, but web pack is going to be a little bit more plentiful and a lot of react apps. So set up a basic web pack config and just build some commands that kind of automate a lot of the bundling and set that up for you. That that's going to be helpful. That's going to make you stand out. These are things that junior developers are not doing. That's going to make you stand out and Next just kind of abstracts all of that away so you never have to worry about it. But that's not the reality of most React positions. I think it's only going to hurt you to jump into Next too quickly Now if you've built a bunch of React apps and then you want to try out Next, because I do think it helps to build applications that are full-stack applications in the sense where you're saving data.
Don Hansen:So even if you're not really building a backend it's a bit of a serverless backend. But maybe you just link to Firestore, right, it's kind of just a cloud-hosted database. You set it up with your React app and you're able to just save data to it. You don't really have to worry about building any routes or anything like that. You're just connecting to a third party database and it's really convenient. So you can build more complicated applications by saving and manipulating data in the database and now you could start building projects that are very useful. But if you don't want to use Firestore, you could eventually learn Next and be able to kind of build a basic backend with it. I think that's fine.
Don Hansen:I think people, especially junior developers, are jumping into it way too early and that's the problem. Next is a tool and it's a useful tool. It's very valuable for certain projects, for certain people. Most junior developers are jumping into it way too quickly and you can definitely get a job without it and you're probably going to stand out a lot more. Setting up some of the stuff that, some of the basic stuff that next abstracts and organize, like creating your own organizational pattern. Being able to talk about that in the interview will make you stand out among many other junior developers. So, third one if you are a junior developer, if you have not gotten a professional position, what the fuck are you doing with Tailwind? I have seen so many projects with Tailwind among aspiring developers. And the second you try to take Tailwind out of the workflow. They fumble completely with CSS.
Don Hansen:Learning Tailwind does not mean you are going to be good with CSS. I promise you. It is only going to push you further away from really reinforcing and learning the fundamentals of CSS. I don't know where this misconception is coming from, but please, junior developers, stop learning. Tailwind. Next is explainable eventually and it can make you marketable for a few extra positions and it can teach you some conventional organizational patterns that you can decide if you want to pick up and it can kind of provide a little bit of a backup. There's a reason to eventually learn next as an aspiring front end developer.
Don Hansen:But Tailwind too many people are bad at CSS that are trying to become front end developers. Most positions are not going to be hiring for Tailwind. Most positions are going to be hiring for something like SCSS or styled components. That's what they're using and for some reason Tailwind just gets pushed on everyone and you have to realize just when content creators are obsessed with a tool. I think that's what's happening. They love it, they push it out and a lot of experienced developers might pick it up. They might love it, they might hate it, but a lot of these pushes from bigger content creators are more towards just like stuff they love to use in their own stack.
Don Hansen:But it doesn't necessarily apply to junior developers and I feel like it's really difficult as a junior developer and I want to be charitable here to like navigate all of this information. You're trying to listen to your favorite content creators and you're trying to learn the things that they recommend, because you know they trust you and you kind of assume that they have your best interest at heart in landing a position in the industry, but Tailwind is not the answer. Industry, but Tailwind is not the answer. Oh, by the way, if you're trying to become a front-end developer, I highly recommend you check out Scrimpa. I'm specifically talking about their front-end developer career path. They have a fun, interactive way to learn how to code and become a web developer, and while that's true, that's not the main reason that I want to promote them. Honestly, the main reason is their curriculum is solid. There are a lot of curriculums that do not prepare people to actually be competitive in the market, and I've reviewed a ton of programs and to this day, it is still one of my favorites and one of the best front end curriculums out there for self-taught developers. And they're backed by MDN, a leading and well-respected resource in the developer community, and I actually personally run my own mentees through the program to prepare them for front end developer jobs. And if you choose to sign up via my affiliate link below in the description, you actually get 30% off if you sign up for a paid plan, but you have to sign up by the end of February to take advantage of that, because it expires after that. Anyways, check it out for yourself what, but you have to sign up by the end of February to take advantage of that, because it expires after that. Anyways, check it out for yourself.
Don Hansen:What do you have to lose? Let's get back to the topic. I'm telling you there are way too many people jumping into Tailwind that just suck with CSS, spend time just building. I would even argue that you don't need to learn Sass, scss, that you don't need to learn sass, scss, um, css has come a long way with a lot of its new features where using scss can and like I don't know, building some functions with it can be a little bit of a flex that it can. You can put it on. You know you build something with scss and you do something a little bit more complicated. Create something more reusable with it. Um, you can put that on your resume and um, I think that's completely fine. But there's so much you could do with just CSS alone, where, if you aren't able to build layouts, if you aren't able to like, if you have a design mockup and you're not able to take that design and build a layout with just CSS without Tailwind, you're in trouble. A lot of companies want you to be comfortable with css.
Don Hansen:Please stop using tailwind as a junior developer now if you have spent a lot of time really building a ton of websites all the way through all of your, you know your basic vanilla javascript applications and eventually your rap React applications and eventually you want to try a project with Tailwind to see how you like it. I think that's fine. I think it's okay to explore those tools. The problem is that junior developers are becoming dependent on these abstractions and it is only hurting them. I think it's okay to build another project with a unique library that you want to use. Just please be careful. The problem always is junior developers just keep jumping into abstractions way too quickly. Their foundations suck horribly. So that's really what I'm trying to get a lot of junior developers to realize. That's the problem is just jumping into abstractions too quickly because your favorite content creator told you this is the best tool for the job and they don't really go into context of, like, what job and what applications actually need a lot of these abstractions. But that's besides the point. All right.
Don Hansen:So, fourth thing you do not need to be good with design. Not need to be good with design I. I don't know where this is coming from either, but I get people that'll come to my streams and ask about this and it's like they ask or no. The reason why they don't like front end or they're not pursuing front end is because they're like I'm not good at web design. What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Have you seen some of the stuff that I've built? I build stuff that looks like a five-year-old could have drew it better. Like I suck with design. I suck so hard with design.
Don Hansen:You don't need to be a web designer to be a front-end developer. There are going to be niche positions where kind of blends design and front-end development together. Usually that is more focused on like really small startups where you're wearing a lot of different hats, but that is. Those positions are a lot fewer. When you apply for front-end positions, the expectation usually is going to be that you are going to get a high-fidelity mock-up at least kind of a semi-low-fidelity mock-up at the very least, but usually a high-fidelity mock-up. So you basically get the website what it looks like mobile, potentially tablet version and desktop version and then you translate that into code and you build a website based off of that design. That's your typical front-end developer position. So I don't know where that's coming from.
Don Hansen:You don't need to be good with web design, but I do think you should care about kind of just ux fundamentals. I think like having just a basic understanding of stuff, like being consistent with your spacing. If you have a banner with some text and maybe an input and an email signup or whatever, if you have 50 pixels padding on the very top and you have 10 pixels on the bottom and it looks really scrunched on the bottom and it just looks like crap, I feel like that's. I I feel like neglecting that and not having consistent spacing, or that there are other ux fundamentals, like proximity, that you could focus on. There are lists online that you could look up for like ux web fundamentals, for like front end developers, where you can kind of just take a website and make it look decent and readable and legible, and I don't think that takes much effort and I don't think that's about becoming a better designer. It's just about like very basic positioning of things and sizing of things. I think you could probably spend a day just picking up some UX fundamentals and then start applying them into your projects. No problem, and it'll take a little bit of practice to kind of develop a kind of a I wouldn't even call it like a designer eye, but just like a gut feeling of like you know what I think I should like create a little bit more spacing here. Let me try it. Yes, that looks better Like that's the extent of you building out a lot of your layouts. As a front end developer, you're not expected to be really good at front end or at web design in general. So basic US fundamentals, but definitely not web design. Not a good designer. I promise you you will survive as a front end developer and really, where a lot of developers struggle getting positions as front-end, the reason is because their foundations suck. They suck with JS and they suck with CSS. That's mainly what I see All right.
Don Hansen:The fifth misconception that front-end is the easiest to get into as a software engineer. This has been spread by so many people, a lot of junior developers who are continuing to spread that information when they've never even landed a position in the industry. But they were told that and so they repeat it, they parrot it. Front-end developer positions are very competitive. The number of junior developers who are going through the Mernstack tutorials and just kind of building surface-level applications and applying to front-end positions is crazy.
Don Hansen:There are a lot of aspiring front-end developers that are applying for front-end positions who are not quite at the level they need to be. But companies have to figure out arbitrary ways to trim a lot of resumes and applications. Because so many people are applying to front-end positions, it's highly, highly competitive at the entry level where you're getting like potentially 500 people applying for the same front-end position not all positions, but a lot of positions you'd be surprised, but it there are a lot of Majority of those developers are just surface-level developers that kind of learned a basic Merge Stack tutorial and that was it. That was it and they just built applications with it. They didn't really build a solid foundation. So if you are that aspiring front-end developer that really builds a solid foundation that goes deep into the front-end, you are going to stand out a lot more than you think you are.
Don Hansen:There are a lot of different variables that are going to affect you getting a position. So just being a good developer isn't everything. Also, it's your soft skills, networking, it's how you present yourself, potentially building self-branding, it's like what companies you're applying to Like. There are a lot of different things that you have to do right and that is the struggle of landing a job in the industry. Finally, but I can tell you for certain, most people that are applying for front end positions are just surface level developers who get weeded out because they don't have a portfolio. There's like no activity on GitHub, nothing to showcase of like what they can do, what their experience is. It's people that will fail fizzbuzz tests. It's people that just like, really suck with JavaScript, really suck with CSS. And if you are diving deep into the front end as a junior developer, you're going to stand out quite a bit, but I don't think that means it's the easiest position to get into.
Don Hansen:And you get a lot of people that don't like front end that much, that are just like. You know what I'm gonna break into the industry. I hear front end is the easiest. Once I get get in, then I'll transfer it. Most of those people never become a front end developer. They eventually give up. Most people that would rather do back end do front end and eventually give up Because of what I'm telling you, because it requires depth and most people aren't willing to get that depth of knowledge on the front end, and so they give up. You know, two, three years in they're just like oh, no, company's hiring and they have a ton of spread out knowledge. They haven't really liked it.
Don Hansen:Again, we can go into in a different video of like a lot of other red flags for junior developers. But, like, a lot of people are just trying a bunch of different stuff, hoping like something will stick, and they don't really go into depth and narrow down and become good at that type of position that they're actually applying to. So, if you like backend, what I'm saying is like, do backend Dive at a backend. A lot of people struggle to get that initial backend position because their backend skills are surface level. There aren't a lot of good courses for backend. There just aren't. Um, so shameless shout out. Um, I am affiliated with bootdev. You can get a discount in the video description below and you could definitely try it out for yourself. But, um, for real, like, I recommend them because I've been searching for a very, very long time for a self-taught developer course that actually prepares back-end developers. And that's been the problem because a lot of people that do like back-end they'll uh, they'll learn these full sec node courses and tutorials and stuff like on udemy and different places like that, where it's just teaching you a lot of surface level stuff it doesn't have a lot of depth.
Don Hansen:Front end is not the easiest to get into. Please don't be fooled by that. What I find is the easiest to get into is the path that you actually enjoy enough to spend years building yourself up as a developer going down that path, and if you are not willing to do that, you're going to have a really, really rough time. So if you like front end, it's actually and you're willing to spend years at it. It's actually a lot easier to be competitive among many other people who take a ton of breaks and don't really deepen their knowledge and reinforce their skills. You can see that. But if you don't like front-end, do not expect to just get into the industry, because front-end is the easiest to get into when everyone and their mother wants to apply to it. Pursue something that you might like instead. That's it. Those are five misconceptions for front-end developers. Of course there are a ton more if you want me to extend this video and talk about more misconceptions.
Don Hansen:I was a professional front-end developer for a little less than a few years and I've been mentoring a lot of front-end developers for the past five years or seven years or something like that. So I know front-end pretty well, but I can create more videos like this. Just me know. But yeah, let me know what you think is kind of holding you back in the comments. And you know what I would love to see in the comments to be honest with you. Instead of, like people just blaming the industry, I would like to hear like what you personally are fucking up. Everyone is fucking up. I made so many mistakes trying to land a front end position. Everyone is fucking up as an aspiring developer. What are you fucking up? Let me know in the comments.