Who is a Frontend developer: an overview of IT professions

In our today's article, let's find out who frontend developers are, what knowledge and skills they should have in order to become in-demand and highly paid specialists. But, let's talk about everything in order.

What a frontend developer does

The IT industry is very diverse, and if you are just starting to understand the intricacies of the professions, it will be helpful to know that Front-end is what the user interacts with on a website.

Conventionally, any web page in a browser has two components:

• What the user sees (design, text, interactive elements);
• what the user doesn't see (server interaction, personalisation, performance analytics).

At its core, Front-end is about displaying content/data received from the server to the user, handling the user's interaction with that content, and passing the data from the user back to the server.

Thus, a Frontend developer is an IT professional who is responsible for:

• data delivery (how and at what point in time it should happen, data format and structure);
• design of content on the page (positioning of elements relative to each other, their size, colour);
• response of page elements to various user actions (clicks, mouse movements, scrolling, etc.).

So, in essence, we are talking about the implementation of UI/UX in the web. An important part of a Front-end developer's work is to optimise all these processes for the benefit of the end user: to ensure speed and smoothness of interaction with the page, tracking of actions, security.

What a frontend developer should be able to do: pros and cons of the profession

As for the pros and cons of the profession, there is no unambiguous answer to this question. What seems to be a plus for one person may be a minus for another. 

Front-end developers are needed everywhere

This is a very big plus. Front-end does not end with Front-end (sorry for the tautology). Using the same technology stack, you can be involved in creating single-page websites, dynamic SPAs, mobile and desktop applications, automated testing, etc. 

There is a concept called "FullStack developer". It used to be treated with extreme scepticism. Only a few people could learn JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and thoroughly know Java, Python or PHP on the Back-end. It usually didn't fit in one head. Now FullStack developers are perceived differently. The very concept has transformed. A JavaScript-savvy developer can implement both Front-end and Back-end. There is room to grow.

Even if you don't go into Back-end JavaScript, a Front-end developer must know how the Back-end of his programme/service is structured. At the very least, he should know its structure, understand the subtleties of receiving/processing/storing data on the Back-end, and have a basic understanding of the syntax of the language in which the server side is written.

Frontend programmer is about constant learning and skilful improvement

Front-end developers need to know several languages at once, and updating standards is a constant process. Browsers introduce support for new features independently of each other. The release of new standards triggers another pipeline of updates of popular libraries and frameworks. In this case there is a need for constant training. It often happens that specialists start to learn something new, but by the time they have learnt everything, the information is already outdated.

The front-end is very dynamic

While the specifications of programming languages in the Back-end may be up to date for several years, the Front-end is months or even weeks old. Libraries and frameworks are constantly being updated. The community generates hundreds of modules and packages. Here you have mastered React with its ecosystem of modules, there you have figured out Angular - you need to move on, to learn something new. No sooner had Node.js become somewhat of a standard for back-end development in JavaScript than Deno appeared and is gaining momentum. In this regard, a Front-end developer must delve into the issues of application versioning and its modules, dependency management, framework agnostic architecture. This circle is turning incredibly fast.

Front-end is a lot of diverse tools. The main task is to learn to understand when and which tool is best to use. Many people learn this or that tool without first analysing its effectiveness and feasibility on a specific project. 

Front-end is multifaceted - and that's a minus. But more often than not, those who have been working in this field for a long time are able to choose tools quickly and make decisions based on the current task.

Frontend: what you need to know and what soft-skills to possess

Front-end developer is half designer and half programmer. Such specialists should have both creative thinking and structural thinking. It is important to have taste and be able to transform it into a certain algorithm, so that everything is weighed, clear and to the point.

Code is always a rigid sequence of actions. It has a certain structure. A developer needs to ensure that the code meets the requirements of design, business logic, etc. At the same time, the code should have an abstract component that allows being flexible in choosing one or another development tool, scaling and adapting to changes in the project.

The character of a Front-end developer should be meticulous. Pickiness to details, attention to details. It is often critical for a designer who gives a layout to a developer to match the thickness of the button stroke with the thickness of the font character lines. You need to be able to take on a challenge instead of "that's fine".

Team communication skill is very important. Front-end developer is in the midst of all the lights. You need to discuss layout details with the designer, define terms with the PM, ask questions about business logic. Find out from the back-end developer what query parameters to pass, what data structure will be used. Ask QA how they reproduced the bug during scaling on the mobile device. Ask the analyst for data on browser versions. Get the performance engineer's opinion on why the TTI metric sag occurred. It's important to be communicative.

What Frontend should know: hard-skills

Front-end developer should understand how the web works, what http is, what a server is, how a request from the browser goes to it and how it is returned to the user. Clouds, CDN, caching, etc.

Basic hard-skills:

1. Knowledge of JavaScript.
2. Understanding of the version control system. 
3. Application Packaging Tools. 

What a junior frontend should know: some tips for beginners

Most importantly, don't get lost. First, you should learn basic JavaScript, develop a small application in JavaScript, stumble over all the pitfalls, write tests in the same JavaScript covering the basic functionality of the application, dig into the profiler in Chrome, and then it will be more or less clear how everything works. In this way, it is easier to structure knowledge.

Be sure to learn English, which is a globally recognised universal language in software development. JavaScript and other programming languages need to learn it. All JavaScript operators, methods and functions are clear English words; by their names you understand what they are used for and in what cases. 

And don't give up. Many people, after assessing the amount of theoretical knowledge, simply give up. Don't give up, because thousands of people have succeeded in mastering this profession - you will succeed too, but with the proper attraction, interest and efficiency. 

Lastly, a bit of optimism - Front-end remains the area with the lowest entry threshold for development today.