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John Au-Yeung
John Au-Yeung

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Front End Developer Roadmap — Skills and Trust

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Front end developer is a lucrative profession to be in.

It’s also fun and rewarding as front end features are built and bugs are being fixed.

In this article, we’ll look at the more advanced skills needed to become a front end developer.

Also, we look at ways to build credibility so that you can get hired.

More Advanced Skills

After learning the basics to become a front end developer, there’s still lots to learn.

Every front end framework has its own ecosystem.

React has the biggest ecosystem since it’s used by many developers to build their apps.

We got to learn the most popular libraries in each ecosystem.

For instance, with React, we got to learn Material, Reactstrap, etc. to let us create our apps without creating the UI components from scratch.

Server-side rendering is also becoming more popular to increase the performance of front end apps.

Popular React server-side rendering frameworks include Next.js.

If we want to create static sites, we can use Gatsby.js to generate static sites.

Some popular browser APIs include local storage, web sockets, workers, location API, notifications API, etc.

They all help us do various things much more easily with browsers.

How to Get a Front End Developer Job

We can get a front end developer job with a few steps.

Build a Portfolio Site

To show off our front end skills, we should build a portfolio site with some relevant work.

The site would have sample apps and past projects that look presentable.

We don’t need too many of them.

We can use static site generators like Gatsby to create our site.

It’s also a good chance to practice using React.

The portfolio site is a reflection of our brand.

Freelance Projects

Freelance projects are also a good way to help us gain experience and skills.

It’s one way to build production-quality apps for users before we get a front end developer job.

You can build apps, create email newsletters, update the navigation of a small business’s website, and more.

Link these projects in our portfolio page so that potential managers can see it.

You can also do charity work with some pro-bono projects.

Put Code in Github

If we wrote any code, then it should be put on Github.

This way, whoever wants to hire you can see your code.

You can also make contributions to different repos to Github.

Contribute to Open Source Projects

You can contribute to open source projects to gain experience.

Having contributions to open source projects given you more credibility.

The trust can give you a better chance of being hired.

Contributing to bigger projects gives more credibility.

So if you contribute to big projects like Ruby on Rails, Linux, MySQL, JavaScript frameworks, etc., then you improve your skills and builds trust among the developer community.

Hackathons

Hackathons are where you team up with other people to build some prototype apps and show them off to judges.

Your team can potentially win prizes.

It’s another way to make you known in the community.

Hiring managers and business owners may be in these venues to hire people so it’s another way to meet them.

Conclusion

Learning advanced skills is essential to becoming a front end developer.

Also, there’re many ways to show off your skills to get hired.

The post Front End Developer Roadmap — Skills and Trust appeared first on The Web Dev.

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