How To Become A Beginner Front End Developer In 2021

How to Become A Front End  Developer In 2021

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. 

                                                                         – Bill Gates 

 

So, Who Is a Front End Developer?

 A front end web developer is the person who implements web designs through coding languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Though it’s not as common anymore, front end developers are sometimes called “client-side developers” .

If you head to any site, you can see the work of a front end developer everywhere in the navigation, layouts including this article page.

HTML & CSS

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are the most basic building blocks of web coding. Without these two things, you can’t create a website design, and all you’ll end up with is unformatted plain text on the screen. You can’t even add images to a page without HTML!

Before you get started on any web development career path, you’ll have to master coding with HTML and CSS. The good news is that getting a solid working knowledge of either of these can be done in just a few weeks.

The best part: HTML and CSS knowledge alone will let you build basic websites.

JavaScript

JavaScript lets you add a ton more functionality to your websites, and you can create a lot of basic web applications using nothing more than HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (JS for short). On the most basic level, JS is used to create and control things like maps that update in real time, interactive films, and online games. Sites like Pinterest use JavaScript heavily to make their user interface easy to use (the fact that the page doesn’t reload whenever you pin something is thanks to JavaScript!).

It’s also the most popular programming language in the world, so regardless of your dev career plans, it’s a super valuable thing to learn.

jQuery

jQuery is a JavaScript library: a collection of plugins and extensions that makes developing with JavaScript faster and easier. Rather than having to code everything from scratch, jQuery lets a front end web developer add ready-made elements to projects, then customize as necessary (one reason why knowing JavaScript is so important). You can use jQuery for things like countdown timers, search form autocomplete, and even automatically-rearranging and resizing grid layouts.

JavaScript Frameworks

JS frameworks (including AngularJS, Backbone, Ember, and ReactJS) give a ready-made structure to your JavaScript code. There are different types of JavaScript frameworks for different needs, though the four mentioned are the most popular in actual job listings. These frameworks really speed up development by giving you a jumpstart, and can be used with libraries like jQuery to minimize how much from-scratch coding you have to do.

Front End Frameworks

CSS and front end frameworks (the most popular front end framework is Bootstrap) do for CSS what JS Frameworks do for JavaScript: they give you a jumping-off point for faster coding. Since so much CSS starts with exactly the same elements from project to project, a framework that defines all of these for you upfront is super valuable. Most front end developer job listings expect you to be familiar with how these frameworks work and how to use them.