What’s the best part about working as a Frontend Developer?
What is the coolest thing about being a Frontend Developer? And how will AI impact this field in the future? We asked Robert Chamberlain, Head Teacher Frontend Developer.
What are the most important qualities a Frontend Developer must have?
– Development is all about problem solving – a client may have a design or a brief or just an idea, and it is the developer’s job is to work out how to build that vision. For a frontend developer, who builds the user interface that millions of people will potentially interact with every day, the most important trait to have is attention to detail. Every huge thing is just a collection of small things, and an FE needs to get all the small thing right for a website to work. The FE landscape is constantly changing as user behaviour changes, so a willingness to learn and adapt is essential. Finally, whether you work in a team or as an individual, communication is extremely important – being able to tell a client or designer why their design or idea is not ideal and how it needs to change is very important.
– Personality wise – and this sounds counter intuitive – the best developers are very stubborn. Refusing NOT to solve a problem is an essential trait.
What’s the best thing about working as a Frontend Developer?
– The coolest thing about working as a developer in 2024 is the feeling that you can build absolutely anything. Due to the evolving nature of the technology and frameworks, the tools available now days to a developer allow you to build almost anything you can think of. I think development is very similar to music – it is a super structured context where one mistake can be fatal, but within that super rigid structure you have unlimited room for creativity. You really get the idea that the only limits are your creativity.
– The best thing about working as a developer is how universal and in demand your skillset is. Knowledge of FE developer means you can get a job in any country in the world. You can work remotely, onsite, fulltime, part time, for a salary or freelance – the sheer amount of opportunity to structure your life is almost unmatched.
How will the development of AI impact this field in the future?
– AI is a very exciting development and is already making life as a developer somewhat easier. Most of the major tools developer use are introducing AI ’co-pilots’ to help write more robust code, and in the future this trend will continue. AI, like a million other things, is a tool for learning and in the future it will help produce not only better programs for developers to use, but also better developers.
What three tools can’t a Frontend Developer designer live without?
– The three essential tools for an FE developer are a good Integrated Development Environment – I use and recommend Visual Studios Code, github – an online repository for all your projects, and Node/React.js. Node is a ’run time environment’ that has revolutionized the word of development by allowing both FE and BE to use the same language, while React a frontend library created by Facebook that makes FE development super powerful.
