Today, we are living in the digital era of infinite possibilities — Despite their origins, age, and status, people from all over the world are creating different businesses: E-Commerce, tech startup, NFTs, physical goods, etc.
Every one of those businesses needs a website.
Every one of those entrepreneurs will try to reach and find a developer.
Every one of those developers will do the job.
But not every developer will do it CORRECTLY.
Today, through my product and this blog article, I am sharing with you what those past 5 years in the industry have led me to think about my job and my colleagues’ work on the internet.
I. Seeing too many unoptimized websites.
We all see a huge amount of websites that takes ages to load.
You’ll tell me that this is not a problem and that bandwidth will be upgraded in the next following years and that 5G+ will solve all those issues. No more optimizations to do, everything is INSTANT.
Unfortunately, we haven’t reached this point yet — knowing that in my natal country, I am running on E with my mobile connection (Yep, it really sucks.).
The answer isn’t to wait for a magic 6G deployment over the whole globe. We all have to optimize our websites and projects at some point.
It isn’t something easy at first, but with some theory and practice, knowing that the major problems are coming from the size of your images and the libraries that we are using is a big step towards the optimization part.
We often heard a lot about accessibility and this is a fully different and legitimate topic but websites performance is often never taught in classes and online courses.
It should.
Loading time isn’t just a matter of performance — it has a huge impact on a site’s success, too.
Amazon found that every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales
Research shows that 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take over 3 seconds to load
70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer
II. Seeing too many developers diving into big frameworks without having the fundamentals.
Getting rich quick-schemes doesn’t exist. Winning $15,000/month without kicking your own b*tt for years doesn’t exist as well.
I will tell you a secret: it is the same for frameworks.
I’ve seen too many developers diving into React, VueJS, and Angular without any proper fundamentals with JavaScript. Going from HTML basics to React in a few months of practice isn’t the answer.
I met some guys who were trying to handle some React projects without the basics of Javascript. I think you should at least have 2 years of experience in those basics languages before diving into such a thing. (personal opinion)
It’s like throwing yourself in the middle of a lake and asking you to come back to the shore — The problem is: you don’t know how to swim.
Do things slowly
Yeah, I know. It’s frustrating.
You want that job that requires some React skills.
You want to be better than your old colleague who is making awesome websites.
You want to leave your job and become the next Steve Jobs of websites.
It takes time.
Start with the basics, follow some DEV roadmap online: here is one, and, with some practices and real experiences, come back and learn React–in this order.
If you find yourself in these words, read them several times and follow my advice.
III. Seeing too many developers working with the wrong mindset and a bad workflow.
If you’ve been working as a developer for some years now, you’ll know that working on someone else project can be a pain in the ***.
You don’t fully understand his code/choices — you are not inside the other developer’s mind.
You take ages installing it on your computer — because he/she is using different packages, a different database, and some other mystical and strange software.
ANNNND… You’re telling yourself:
“Omg, why did he write that? This is not how it should be.”
“I am pressing SAVE and nothing is being reformated? wtf.”
“This project is a complete mess. Nothing is at the right place.”
“What is this horrible thing: const MyNeWVariAbles = 56*4;”
“Should I take an axe and threat my boss until he gave me something else to work on?”
I mean, there is hundreds of thousands of different packages, libraries, and ways to code, its not something that we can easily avoid? Right?
Indeed.
BUT, it is not an excuse to not order your files and folder correctly. It is not an excuse to avoid commenting your code and it is not a reason to disrespect your own code and work.
YOUR workflow, EVERYONE’s workflow matters.
M-I-N-S-E-T
Sorry, it is not a magical formula that will write some code for you.
It takes years of practice and self-reflection to become a better developer, to be fully responsible towards our own code, and to handle beautiful projects.
We are all improving at our own pace.
A developer with 1 year of experience can actually be smarter and better than another one with 8+ years in the industry–it is only a question of mindset.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that comes to me when I am thinking about “Having the right mindset” and “How a beginner developer can actually beat the senior one”:
Looking for new ways to improve
Learning how to write better code
Learning design fundamentals as a developer
Understanding what REALLY matters when handling website performances
Stop loading 15 libraries and packages to just use 4 of them
Stop spending 95% of the project development on the UI part rather than the UX part
Stop thinking about our own dev comfort zone and business before our clients’ and users’ needs
etc.
Today, I hope you fully understand why I wanted to share my knowledge through this product.
A quick article and introduction to what is currently working for me.
The workflow and mindset that helps me save time and do more.
The “behind the scene” concepts that are actually pushing my projects forwards and helping me win some awards.
And, above all, the best practices that lead me to publish wonderful experiences with incredible SEO and performance optimization.
This guy sums it up better than I do:
“More is less.”
— Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Thanks for reading.
This post isn’t meant to be a ‘self-promotion article’ but if you still want to take a look at all those subjects — Here’s the link to this tool that hopefully will help you in your journey: https://www.staticstarter.com
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