Web App Development: Top Skills Required For a Successful Front-End Developer In 2020
In the previous blog post, we examined the technologies and trends that are expected to become popular for web application development in 2020. And, speaking of web application development, front-end is critical to the success of any website, or applications that required interactions with end-users.
Back in the day, front-end development was quite straight-forward and simple. However, with the advancement of web and mobile technologies - front-end development also evolves and becomes technically more demanding than before.
Thus, being able to hire experienced and reliable front-end developers who can manage and work together with other members (e.g. designers, product owners, back-end engineers, etc.) is highly essential for the success of the project.
Below are the top skills that need to be considered when hiring front-end developers:
HTML and CSS
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are the basic foundation when it comes to front-end web development. HTML and CSS communicates about the structure, styling, and layout of a website to the browser.
Whether it’s text, graphic, video, or animation, HTML, and CSS are an integral part of rendering the UI of any web page.
As a result, knowing HTML and CSS is one of the most basic requirements and compulsory for front-end developers.
JavaScript
In order to make a website become more interactive– with extra dynamic functionalities such as: animations, and validation of input at the client-side – front-end developers will also employ Javascript technology to make such things happen.
Javascript could be considered as the world most popular programming language, allowing front-end developers to create and control elements such as interactive video clips, audio, and online games as well as others. Therefore, in addition to HTML and CSS, it's also necessary for front-end developers to master Javascript.
Javascript frameworks
Undoubtedly, Javascript is necessary for web app development. With JavaScript (JS) frameworks, web development projects become faster and easier.
Read about: “Web Application Development: Trends & Technologies For 2020” to find out about the popular Javascript framework for web development.
Among the wide variety of JS frameworks to choose from, below are some of the most popular for web development:
- Angular
- ReactJS
- Vue.js
React JS is a JavaScript framework created by Facebook, and make it easy for front-end developers to create interactive UIs. The advantage of ReactJS, which is the ability to reuse code components of a different level anytime, results in a significant decrease in development time. This helps developers to complete their tasks quicker and easier.
Vue.js is another Javascript framework with tools allowing front-end developers to build user interfaces effectively.
Version Control Software
To efficiently keep track of changes that happened during development, especially for large-scale projects, it’s necessary to use version control software to make it easier to collaborate with the changes occurred and revert back to an earlier version in case of faults arise in the newly implemented code.
Among quite a number of options to choose from, Github is currently the most popular Saas version control software in the market, allowing developers to fork, make changes, and commit or delete the changes. As a result, a front-end developer should be able to use Github for efficiently keeping track of all project changes.
Test and Debug
Regardless of the size and scope of the project, bugs and errors are bound to happen when it comes to web application development. As a result, being able to perform testing and debugging is crucial, specifically:
- UI testing (or functional testing): to ensure that the website functions as expected when users interact with the website.
- Unit testing: to verify that each unit/component of the website performs as designed.
After detection of all those bugs and errors related to front-end development, the next step is for developers to debug and fix all those errors so that the end-product performs as intended.
RESTful Services and APIs
REST (REpresentational State Transfer) APIs and web services allow front-end developers to communicate with the back-end architecture for web resources, without having to understand or getting involved with the back-end architecture itself.
A front-end developer will typically be required to "work with" with multiple endpoints of the API that belonged on the server-side architecture which is responsible for back-end developers.
Therefore, being able to understand and know about RESTful Services and APIs will make the job becomes easier for front-end developers, especially for web app development project of complex and large scale - requiring frequent request, and creating and editing resources on the back-end, without having to know about server-side language or work on the databases reside on the back-end.
Content Management Systems (CMS)
For almost every website out there, there is a CMS (content management system) enabling users to create and update content on the site. There are quite a number of CMS to choose from, with the most popular CMS worldwide is WordPress, capturing 51% of CMS market share.
The other popular CMSs include Magento (for e-commerce site), Joomla, and Drupal. Being well-versed in a specific type of CMS such as Magento or Drupal allows developers to work in a niche area such as e-commerce which is highly desired by many large enterprises.
Responsive design
Nowadays, mobile devices have been gradually replacing desktop as the technologies of choice for consumers to access the internet. Thus, the web UI must be created so that it is compatible with a wide range of devices of different screen sizes, including mobile, tablet, and desktop/laptop.
For front-end developers, this means responsive and mobile design belongs in the must-know category, particularly the Bootstrap template – which is a popular framework for designing responsive web applications.
Soft-skills and Problem Solving
Just like any other software development project, there will be challenges involved, such as bugs and errors occurring, or front-end code does not work when being integrated with the back-end code. Thus, being able to solve the problem is a desired trait that should be considered when hiring front-end developers.
Conclusion
In 2020, front-end developers are among the most in-demand profession in the IT industry. For typical web development projects, front-end developers will be required to work with a team of designers, project managers, and back-end developers.
So, in addition to the critical technical skills as listed above, front-end developers also need to possess other soft-skills such as problem-solving, time-management, and other interpersonal skills.
