How to grow as a frontend developer (my journey)

Sushant Kumar — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 09:11:24 +0000

Background

Hello everyone, this is my first post on dev.to and I wanted to share my journey as a frontend developer and things that I learned during the past 5 years.

Initial phases

The initial phases were a bit difficult. I tried to learn everything at once which made the process very overwhelming. It's important to understand that learning is a continuous process and it takes time. I divided my learning in phases and based on the tasks. I used to feel hesitant to ask for help but I later realised that it's okay to ask for help if you are stuck. At the end of the day, everyone was on the same shoe when they started their journey.

Read documentation

The best way to start learningReact is to get started with the documentation. It provides the fundamental knowledge which can be then applied when doing hands on programming. Everyone has a different approach. If I didn't understand a concept then I would see a tutorial on youtube or freecodecamp or web dev simplified.

For learning about web fundamentals the best resource is https://developer.mozilla.org/. It contains in depth information about any html, css or javascript topics.

Don't be afraid of code reviews

When pushing your first commit or initial commits to github, you might worry about your commit getting rejected or being left with many remarks. But that's okay. I became a better developer after code reviews. My coding style improved and I started using good coding practices while writing code.

Apply your knowledge to build projects

To test your knowledge, you can always start building small projects. https://www.youtube.com/@codewithantonio is a good starting point. If you ran out of ideas then you can always search on Product Hunt the top trending projects.
Roundup is a project that we launched on ProductHunt. It was an amazing experience, learning and building something from scratch with a vision.

Don't stop learning

Tech and specially frontend development is ever changing and growing field. It's important to stay updated along with having a clear understanding about the language. For example: If you have a good knowledge of React, you can start learning NextJs. If you have done NextJs, you can learn how to use different frontend framework which will kickstart the development process such as CharkraUI or AntDesign. Then you can move on to building your own library and publish it on github. The process going on.

Happy coding :)