How to become a Front-end Developer

Hello there, for sometime now I have been asked a particular question “How can i do what you do and i ask back what do i do and the reply is how can I become a Front-end developer like you ? ” and i give a brief answer but today I will be giving a full insight to the HOW question I get a lot.

Note these are my personal opinions on how to become a Front-end developer.

Lets begin…

First of all let’s think about this “is there really a way to become a Front-end developer 🙄 ? ” of course there is always a way to become what ever you want in this life the question is HOW.

You want to become a Front-end Developer cool but what is Front-end Development and who is a Front-end Developer ? Let’s find out

Front-end Development : Have you ever stepped into a website like dribble or awwwards.com and wondered whats going on how does this nice looking site come to live or how it works, the layout, the colors, the buttons that are clickable and disabled, the animations, images bouncing and so on. I can tell you that practically all I mentioned above is capable through Front-end Development. The Front-end helps the user interact with the web without the Front-end the user can’t interact with the web why? that’s because all the user see’s is a white page with nothing to interact with and also the Back-end cannot work because it has nothing to work with but that’s out of range for this topic.

Front-end Developer : From what I discussed in the above sub-heading you should have a hunch on who or what a Front-end Developer is. A Front-end Developer is a person that implements web designs through programming languages or rather I will say web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Many of the few attributes a Front-end Developer must have Note I said must have is the ability to make his/her web work responsive on Laptops, Tabs and Mobile devices. By responsive I mean how the website appears, how the layout changes on every kind of device with different screen sizes. Use this site for example PayPlug (this is one of many of my works) when opened on a Mobile device, a Laptop and a Tablet its layout changes. Hope you will understand more with the image below starting with a mobile view to the tablet and finally the web view

There are few other abilities or attributes a Front-end Developer needs like the ability to debug there personal and non-personal codes, solve problems they face while coding and also solve the problems faced by others in the Front-end Dev world and last but not the least the ability to pay attention to details because there will come a time when you have to work with a design done by a UI/UX (user interface/user experience) Designer and what you do has to be inch perfect to what was done by the UI/UX Designer.

Not to waste so much time let’s head to the web technologies or skills needed by a Front-end Developer.

Web Technologies / Skills

There are several skills needed to become a Front-end Developer but I will touch the basic ones needed to start up.

HTML and CSS :

You have seen HTML and CSS somewhere in this article and probably wandered what it means or what it does and congrats to those that searched out the meaning and function immediately, for those that didn’t let get down to it. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup language and this is the standard markup language used for creating a web page. For example looking at any web page you notice text of different sizes are present right, without HTML that wont be possible. Cascading style sheet also know with the famous abbreviation CSS is mainly used for styling and beautifying the web page. I guess you should have figured that out by now through the name style sheet. HTML and CSS work hand in hand and this is why i say so, without HTML you cannot use a CSS file “you will get to understand this soon enough” and without CSS or any style sheet your Web site will look horrible plus driving users away because the user experience is bad. This two web Technologies are very important to become a Front-end Developer and are like a starter pack for any one looking to become a Front-end Developer.

JavaScript :

At a point in my career I always told myself “don’t worry JavaScript isn’t important right now you will learn it when the time is right 🤦‍♂️” little did I know i was killing my career slowly because whenever I got interviewed hardly do I get questioned much on HTML and CSS but all I hear is do u know JavaScript. Note you can build a site without JavaScript tho not just any kind of site but you must learn it to move forward in your career, you cannot run away from JS I had to learn that the hard way. JavaScript is known with it abbreviation JS and it handles different functions on your site such as scrolling abilities, page animations, and so on. Now you will be thinking of something JavaScript can do let me give you 5 seconds to think 1… 2… 3… 4… and 5… did you get something ? I hope you so. Using this site for example Desevens (also one of my works) clicking on the menu

you’d notice the three strokes beside the menu changes and the menu text changes to close

this is the work of JavaScript and a little CSS, also scroll down to the section you see an image changing

notice it has a forward, pause and backward button meaning you can pause and play the image slider. There are many more things you can use JavaScript to do. JavaScript practically brings your website to live.

Conclusion

Gradually you will become better in what you do from just HTML, CSS and JavaScript you will move up to Frameworks but for now do not border yourself about Frameworks till you are strong in this three skills mentioned. So there are many others skills needed but as you grow you will pick them up along the way just like I said about Frameworks and trust me consistency matters a lot in becoming a programmer, you have to give up some habits to gain some habits. I hope this article has given you what you need to become a Front-end Developer for a start and build yourself up. Do well to follow me on twitter and drop a comment or clap for me on your way out cheers 🎉