Tips to Help Web Developers in 2020
1. Try to understand Git concepts
Knowing the basic commands is good, but try to also understand the underlying concepts.
2. Learn the concepts of clean code
Understanding the clean code philosophy helps you produce better, more readable code with fewer failures.
3. Build a portfolio site
You should be proud of your work, and so share it with others and give future employers and clients the chance to hire you.
4. Write a technical blog post
Writing a blog post has several advantages. Learning new things is often easier if you try to explain what you’re learning to others. And giving back to the community is a great move.
5. Get your first freelance gig
Make 2020 the year for a career change and land your first contracting job. Have a look at web platforms that offer project opportunities, contact recruiters, go to community events and conferences, or see if your employer might want to hire you as a freelancer.
6. Learn the JavaScript fundamentals
JavaScript runs the web. And JavaScript will probably still be around while frameworks like React and Vue come and go. So invest in learning the JavaScript fundamentals.
7. Learn one big JavaScript framework
Modern web applications are often times powered by frameworks like Vue, React, or Angular. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Airbnb maintain and use them. So, as a front end developer, you should at least know one of them. But in the end, it’s just JavaScript.
8. Try to move to a senior position
Learn what it takes to become a senior developer. Besides experience, it’s very important to have soft skills like empathy and great communication skills.
9. Mentor junior developers
The most important deliverable of a senior developer is more senior developers. So try to help educate others without being bossy.
10. Create a tutorial for others
If you’ve learned a new programming language, feature, or technology, share your knowledge with others.
11. Try out VS Code and its extensions
If you haven’t used VS Code as your primary IDE, you should definitely try it out. It will make you a much more productive developer, and it has a lot of great extensions, like code formatting and styling or auto-completion.
12. Leave a toxic workplace
If you’re working in a toxic place or have a toxic boss, look out for other job opportunities. People won’t generally change, and your talent is too good to be wasted. Look for someone who can appreciate you and your skills.
13. Contribute to open source projects
Contributing to open source is probably something every developer has thought about. You can engage and help the community, practice programming in real environments, and add it to your portfolio. A lot of OSS projects are welcoming new users that can add to their repositories.
14. Learn a fundamentally different programming language
To broaden your horizons and get out of your comfort zone, it might be a good idea to learn a completely different programming language. For example, if you normally use Java, try JavaScript, Rust, or Golang. Try something you’ve never worked with before.
15. Deploy a serverless function
Serverless functions are small programmatic functions with a single purpose that are hosted on a managed infrastructure. You can use AWS Lambda, for example, to host them. Many projects make use of them, and so it’s worth giving it a shot.
16. Learn GraphQL concepts
RESTful APIs have been the de facto standard for web development in past years. But with Facebook’s GraphQL on the rise, you should definitely try to learn the concepts behind it.
17. Build a JAMstack application
JavaScript, APIs, and Markup — applications consisting of these technologies make up the JAMstack. The JAMstack is powerful, lightweight, and independent of dedicated backends. A good fit for corporate websites or your portfolio site, for example.
18. Have a look at OWASP Top 10
The Open Web Application Security Projects offers recommendations and best practices for developing secure applications.
19. Do more pair programming
Pair programming is one of the best ways to share knowledge between programmers. You can learn from more experienced developers, or you could help out more junior developers. Either way, it’s a good thing and helps you to stay focused.
20. Opt-in for code reviews
Code reviews are mandatory in many projects and demanded by many corporations before code gets merged. You should participate in such reviews quite often. If you’re a beginner, you can learn by reviewing other developers’ code and ask them questions about it. If you’re more experienced it helps to reduce errors in the codebase.
21. Focus on problem-solving
One thing that makes a good (senior) developer is the ability to focus on solutions instead of problems. Always try to find ways to deal with challenges.
22. Learn how to debug
Programming code will never be perfect. There will be bugs and errors, that’s for sure. But in order to find and fix them, you need to learn how to debug your code
23. Don’t sell yourself short
One thing I always need to remind myself is that I’m worth whatever money I charge a client or ask for from an employer. All the skills you’ve acquired, all the hours you put into programming, and your valuable personality should give you the confidence to negotiate in your favor.
24. Learn from your failures
Everyone makes mistakes. Even the most successful developers make a lot of mistakes. But what’s important is that you learn from these mistakes in order to grow — both in your skills as a developer and in your personal life.
25. Always test your code
Writing tests for your code, whether unit tests or integrations tests, seems to cause extra work, and you might think that the code you write is perfect and without errors anyway. That’s a mistake. Almost all corporations and open source projects expect you to test your code. And you should even do it in your personal projects to get a hang on it.
26. Learn design patterns
Design patterns are building blocks for architecting software applications. You won’t necessarily need them in every project, but it’s good to know some of the major ones.
27. Don’t hesitate to ask for help
There’s nothing bad about asking for help. However, it’s always a good practice to try something on your own before asking someone to help you. But in general, if you’re stuck, reach out to someone who can help you.
28. Attend a technical conference
Attending conferences is a great way to learn about new technologies and to engage with the community. Quite often, employers offer their staff discounts or pay the fees for them if they bring back knowledge and share it with their coworkers.
29. Speak at a technical conference
If you have the chance, you should speak about a topic you’re interested in at a conference. Even if you’re an introverted person, it will help you build confidence.
30. Try to stay relevant
This is easier said than done, but in order to keep track of the rapidly changing world of technology, you need to constantly learn and improve your skills. Read blog posts, attend conferences, watch videos, subscribe to newsletters, read books, attend (offline) courses. There are countless possibilities.
31. Be open-minded
Nothing is for granted. No technology, no framework, no library. You have to constantly adapt to succeed in this industry. And being open-minded doesn’t only count towards tech — in the end, it’s the humans that matter.
32. Never give up
Everyone struggles sometimes — some more, some less. It won’t always be easy. But you’re not alone, and we all started somewhere. You can do it!
