If you thinking of a career as a front end developer or you are already on your way to becoming a front end developer, the good is that a lot of opportunities await you. Here are some facts.

Organizations are looking for ways to enhance their websites with rich visuals and powerful interactions of the web. Great salaries, huge demand and job security are just some of the perks that come with a career in web development. With the right skills you can be accessible to numerous job opportunities.

We will look at some of the opportunities in front end development, how much you can earn and how you can take advantage of these opportunities.

• What is a Front End Developer?
• Is Front End Developer a Good Career?
• Who Makes More Money Frontend or Backend Developer?
• What Skills Does a Front end Developer Need?
• How do Developers get Paid?
• How to get a Promotion as a Developer
• Which is Best Front end Technology?

What is a Front End Developer?

Front end developers are in charge of a website’s appearance and interactive functionality. That is, they add the ‘human’ aspect to the client-side of a website. Front end web developers fundamentally understand human experience and strive to create useful and user-friendly website features.  

Read Also: A Software Developers Career Guide

Programmers in this field are in charge of everything you see when navigating a website. Presentation is hugely important to front end developers. For competitive markets, how a site looks can determine who’s on top. An excellent front end web developer designs a website to reflect what people want or need from the service.

Front-End Developer Skills

In addition to empathy and creative talent, a well-rounded front end developer needs to master several coding languages.

The languages that a front-end developer is expected to know include:

• HTML
• JavaScript
• CSS
• HTML

This language forms the root of all web development. It’s vital for basic website features, so you’ll need to know it inside and out.

• JavaScript

This language works closely with HTML to create interactive website features. It works with all browsers, and its use is ubiquitous across the web development world. A solid understanding of JavaScript is essential for front end web development.

• CSS

Without this language, HTML would be too basic for modern website building. CSS adds numerous useful features to sites like buttons and templates. Knowledge of this complicated language is mandatory, but scores of excellent tools exist to make CSS easier to use.

Is Front End Developer a Good Career?

For professionals in many fields, finding a new job can be a daunting process, but for skilled Front End Developers, the opportunities are immense that phones are ringing off the hook.

According to Jen Pugh, a New York-based recruiter, the hiring for Front End Developers is unbelievably competitive and the situation is pretty intense, where people are getting 7 to 8 emails from recruiters.

Front End Developers are really spoilt with the numerous choices they have. According to him, anyone who knows HTML5, CSS3, and the newer JavaScript frameworks like AngularJS and BackboneJS is in high demand.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has also stated that Web Developer recruitment is projected to grow by 20 percent by 2022, which is more than the average for all other occupations.

Who Makes More Money Frontend or Backend Developer?

How much do frontend developers make? How about backend developers? Actually, both fields make about the same salary. Front end developers make an average salary of $76,000, and backend developers averaging $75,000. 

While it’s not the highest salary in the tech industry, you can make a lot more with experience. Senior developers can make over $100,000 and tend to earn a pay increase with every year of experience, and if you live in Silicon Valley, you’re likely to make even more. 

In San Francisco, the average salary in this field is $114,000! That’s well above the average, yet it is typical for tech careers in the Bay Area.

How Fast can you Become a Front end Developer?

While becoming a front-end web developer can be a brisk process, there are still a few steps involved. So what are the first steps and how long do they take?

The absolute first step toward web development is to start learning two coding languages ASAP—HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS are markup languages used to define the parts of a web page (HTML) and determine the page’s fonts, colors and layout (CSS).

These two skills will allow you to start building basic websites, and they’ll even qualify you to start doing paid HTML and CSS jobs (think freelance web development gigs for friends, family, or local businesses). And here’s the thing—learning to code with HTML and CSS can take as little as weeks or even days depending on your pace and approach.

After getting experience with HTML and CSS, you can expand your development repertoire further with programming languages like JavaScript—a scripting language that controls dynamic website content (e.g. animated graphics and interactive maps).

Learning JavaScript will add a few more months to your learning process, but knowing JavaScript will open up even more development jobs.

Once you’ve nailed the basics of these front-end development skills the learning process will continue over the course of your development career, and there are always more skills to learn in order to stay professionally flexible and relevant—for instance, if you’re interested in exploring back-end web development (web development focused on the “under the hood” aspect of websites like database management) you’ll need to learn server-side languages like Ruby on Rails—but the process of becoming a professionally viable front-end developer can realistically be achieved in a matter of months.

What Skills Does a Front end Developer Need?

When starting your career as a front end developer, it is important for you to know the skills that are required of you. This will help you become better prepared and focus on the more important things. Below we have outlined some of this skills.

1. HTML/CSS

You won’t find a single front end developer job listing that doesn’t call for (or assume) proficiency in these two languages. But let’s take a step back and look at what HTML and CSS are.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language used to create web pages. A markup language is your way of making notes in a digital document that can be distinguished from regular text. It’s the most basic building block you’ll need for developing websites.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the language used to present the document you create with HTML. Where HTML comes first and creates the foundation for your page, CSS comes along next and is used to create the page’s layout, color, fonts, and…well, the style!

Both of these languages are absolutely essential to being a front end developer. Simply put, no HTML/CSS, no web development.

2. JAVASCRIPT/JQUERY

Another MAJOR tool in your front end developer toolbox is going to be JavaScript (JS). Where HTML is a markup language and CSS is a style sheet language, JS is the first language I’ve mentioned that’s a bonafide programming language. What’s the difference? Where HTML and CSS determine the presentation of a page, JS determines the function.

In some instances a very simple website or web page is fine, but for situations where you need interactive features—audio and video, games, scrolling abilities, page animations—JS is the tool you’ll use to implement them (though as CSS evolves, it’s starting to handle a lot of these duties as well).

One cool thing to keep in mind about JS is the existence of libraries like jQuery, a collection of plugins and extensions that make it faster and easier to use JS on your website.

jQuery takes common tasks that require multiple lines of JS code and compresses them into a format that can be executed with a single line. This will be a big help when you’re coding with JS. Unless, of course, you don’t like saving time. 😉

3. CSS AND JAVASCRIPT FRAMEWORKS

I know you are wondering, we already covered CSS and Javascript, right?

We did, but they’re both such a big part of front end development that a lot of other skills you’ll need are going to build off of them.

CSS and JavaScript frameworks are collections of CSS or JS files that do a bunch of the work for you by providing common functionality (think logging into a website or searching a blog). Instead of starting with an EMPTY text document you start with a code file that has lots of awesome JS already in it.

Frameworks have their strengths and weaknesses—don’t we all!—and it’s important to choose the best framework for the type of website you’re building. For example, some JS frameworks are great for building complex user interfaces, while others excel at displaying all of your site’s content.

To make things even MORE fun you can use frameworks together. It’s common to pair Bootstrap with another JavaScript framework like AngularJS. The content is handled by Angular, and the look & feel is handled by Bootstrap (with some CSS sprinkled in, too).

Since you’ll be using CSS and JS all the time in your web development, and since many projects start with similar style elements and code, knowledge of these frameworks is critical to being an efficient developer.

4. CSS PREPROCESSING

Yes, another skill related to CSS!

CSS on its own, while essential, can sometimes be limiting. One of these limitations is that fact that you can’t define variables, functions, or perform arithmetic operations.

This is a problem when a project grows in scale and code base, as you’ll soon find yourself wasting a lot of time writing repetitive code to make changes. Like CSS (and JS) frameworks, CSS preprocessing is another means of making your life as a developer easier and more flexible.

Using a CSS preprocessor like Sass, LESS, or Stylus, you’re able to write code in the preprocessor’s language (allowing you to do things that might be a huge pain with plain old CSS). The preprocessor then converts that code to CSS so it will work on your website.

Let’s say you decide to tweak the shade of blue you’re using across a site. With a CSS preprocessor, you’d only have to change the hex value in one place instead of going through ALLLL your CSS and changing the hex values everywhere.

5. VERSION CONTROL/GIT

After all your hard work marking up with HTML, styling with CSS, and programming with JS, you’ll have gone through a number of revisions in your development.

If something goes wrong along the way the last thing you’ll want to do is start over from the beginning. Version control is the process of tracking and controlling changes to your source code so this won’t happen.

Version control software—like open source stalwart Git—is a tool you’ll use to track those changes so you can go back to a previous version of your work and find out what went wrong without tearing the whole thing down.

As you might imagine, this a skill that you (and your prospective clients and employers) will be very happy to have.

6. RESPONSIVE DESIGN

Remember the other day when you only used one device to look at a website? Yeah, me neither. The days of desktop (or even laptop) PCs being the only way of viewing websites are so far gone.

These days we use any number of computers, phones, and tablets to look at web pages. Ever notice how these pages adjust themselves to the device you’re using without you doing anything on your end? This is due to responsive design. Understanding responsive design principles and how to implement them on the coding side is key to front end development.

One cool thing to keep in mind regarding responsive design is that it’s an intrinsic part of CSS frameworks like the aforementioned Bootstrap. These skills are all interconnected and so as you learn one you’ll often be making progress in the others at the same time.

7. TESTING/DEBUGGING

From a website for your mom’s dog walking business to an international site for online banking, bugs are a reality of the development process. In order to keep things moving you’ll need to test your code for bugs along the way, so the ability to test and debug makes the list of essential skills for front end developers.

There are a couple of different testing methods for web development. Functional testing looks at a particular piece of functionality on your site (like a form or database) and makes sure it does everything you’ve coded it to do.

Unit testing is another method. It tests the smallest bit of code that’s responsible for one thing on your site and examines it individually for correct operation.

Testing is a big part of the front end development process, but fortunately, it’s another area where there are frameworks to help you. Programs like Mocha and Jasmine are designed to speed up and simplify your testing process.

8. BROWSER DEVELOPER TOOLS

Users will ultimately be interfacing with your websites through a web browser. The way your site is rendered by these browsers is going to be a big part of whether your work is successful or not.

Similarly to the testing and debugging mentioned above, all modern web browsers come equipped with developer tools. These tools allow you to test and fine tune your pages in the browser itself, in ways specific to how the browser is interpreting your code.

Specifics will vary from browser to browser, but browser developer tools generally consist of an inspector and a JavaScript console. The inspector allows you to see what the runtime HTML on your page looks like, what CSS is associated with each element on the page, and also allows you to edit your HTML and CSS and see the changes live as they happen. The JS console allows you to view any errors that occur as the browser tries to execute your JS code.

9. BUILDING AND AUTOMATION TOOLS/WEB PERFORMANCE

You might be seeing a pattern that HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the three primary tools for front end development. Meanwhile, most of the other skills either help make those tools more efficient or help test your site and fix mistakes. The trend continues here with building and automation tools and web performance.

You can code the coolest website ever but if it performs sluggishly on the user’s end it won’t matter. Web performance speaks to the amount of time it takes for your site to load.

If you’re having problems with performance times there are steps you can take to improve them such as optimizing images (scaling and compressing images for peak web performance) and minifying CSS and JavaScript (removing all unnecessary characters from your code without changing functionality).

Carrying out these tasks that lead to better web performance can be another front end time-sink, but that’s where building and automation tools come in.

Programs like Grunt and gulp can be used to automate image optimization, CSS and JS minifying, and other web performance chores. In the ongoing quest for efficiency, it’ll be in your interest to get familiar with them.

10. COMMAND LINE

In a lot of ways, the proliferation of Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs) into computing was one of the best things to ever happen. Who wants to type lines of esoteric commands onto a dead screen in order to get around a machine? It’s a lot easier to point and click on a lively, interactive menu.

GUIs can be alluring when it comes to web development and coding as well. And they’re often fine and handy. But an all-purpose GUI is going to have its limitations for some specific applications. There are going to be times when you’ll need to open a terminal on your computer where you can enter typed commands (command line) to get what you need.

It’s the difference between your computer only yielding what’s available on the surface and being able to get what you need by digging in with your bare hands.

Even if the majority of your work is still done through a GUI, you’ll add serious cred to your front end skills if you have a mastery of the command line.

Front end development skills in the workplace

The front end developer rarely works as a single individual. Most of the time, he or she forms part of a team. Within the workplace, a few front end developer skills stand out as necessary, including:

• Cross-browser development: Browsers today exist in a wide variety of forms. Windows has about half a dozen different major browsers and even more minor browsers. Developing an application or webpage responsive across browsers requires an understanding of cross-browser development. Until every browser reads web standards the same way, this skill will remain relevant to the front end developer.
• Version control: As any programmer understands, there will always be code revisions and bug fixes. Sometimes, a simple bug fix could cause issues with the page, and you may have to roll it back to a previous version. Some companies offer version control software that updates files online as you make new additions. If you need to roll back a version, this software allows you to use an older one. This version control system can be used simultaneously by multiple members of a team.
• Responsive design: The variety of web browsing devices on the market makes it challenging for front end developers to write consistent pages. To respond to this issue, front end developers have innovated responsive design. For a front end developer, a responsive design for a web page ensures that users can view it in a browser or a smartphone without compromising the style or functionality of the page.
• Code testing and debugging: Even in the most skillfully created page, there will probably be bugs that need to be found and fixed. You need to be adept at debugging and stepping through code to find where errors happen. Testing and debugging is as much of a skill as writing code. Much of your development time is likely to be spent fixing errors to get the page working properly.

How do Developers get Paid?

Below you can find a list of ways you can make money as a developer.

• The most common is to have a job at a company or work as a freelancer for multiple clients
• Create and sell digital products (plugins, components (in React, Angular, Vue, Bootstrap, etc), themes, etc)
• build a SAAS (Software as a Service)
• create web, mobile and/or desktop apps where you can have ads or in-app purchases
• Create a blog and monetize it via:
  • ads (Google Adsense, carbonads, etc)
  • sponsorships
  • become an affiliate and promote other people’s products
  • promote your own products
  • get paid to write articles for publications
• write and sell ebooks and/or physical books*
• create a YouTube channel (on topics like: tutorials, developer lifestyle, tips & tricks, news in the field, etc) and monetize it via:
  • YouTube ads
  • sponsorships
  • affiliate marketing
  • promote your own products
• create online courses and/or online programs
• live stream (on Twitch, YouTube, etc) and monetize it via:
  • donations
  • monthly subscriptions
• create a podcast
  • sponsorship
  • promote your own products
• work on Open Source projects and get donations and sponsorships
• create a Patreon page where people can support you
• create a job board and get paid by companies to connect them with developers, designers, etc…
• sell swag
• sell a newsletter
• have 1-on-1 coaching sessions
• create a trading bot
• participate in paid coding challenges
• participate in bug bounty programs

How to get a Promotion as a Developer

Like most industries, promotions come with experience and success. In the world of web development, ongoing education and new skill development are very important.

The more skills you know, the more likely you will be to get promoted. Learn a new coding language or some technical writing skills. The more you branch out, the more your company will appreciate what you do and the better your chances of getting promoted.

Furthermore, if you can satisfy clients that are investing large amounts of money into your company you will be noticed. You want to be sure to make their page exactly the way they want it and maybe add a few more perks on the side. If high paying clients ask for you, you are more likely to get a promotion.

When you’ve positioned yourself and you’re ready to ascend the career ladder, ask your boss for a meeting to discuss your role. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

• Do plan the meeting. It’s a good idea to have your agenda outlined in advance so you can demonstrate that you’re a fit for the new position. Having everything laid out in advance allows you to focus on important points, which makes you appear more composed and confident.
• Don’t skimp on the presentation. If you have insights or data to share, get them down on paper so you can present them to your boss with flair.
• Do dress for success. Even if your company dress code is casual, take care with your appearance on the day of your meeting. You don’t have to wear a three-piece suit if your work attire is usually business casual, but make sure you’re looking clean and polished.
• Don’t make it all about you. Your boss likely doesn’t care that your rent went up, or that it’s been a couple of years since your last promotion. Remember, it’s not about what your company can do for you, but what you can do for the company.
• Do focus on the benefits. Your boss’s job is to look after the best interests of the company. He or she needs to see how promoting you will improve that bottom line.
• Don’t compare yourself to others. Resist the urge to focus on others, even if you work harder than a co-worker who holds a higher position, or you know that someone on the same tier makes more money. Your meeting should focus on your own merit and accomplishments.
• Do think in terms of what you deserve, not what you need. You may well need more money, but unless you can prove that you also deserve it you won’t get far in your quest for a promotion. Be prepared to demonstrate why you’re the person for the job.
• Don’t assume you deserve a raise simply based on your length of employment. Many workers think that longevity should equal a promotion. That’s not the case in today’s workplace. You’ll need to show how your contributions create value.
• Do consider timing. It makes good sense to ask for a promotion just after you’ve achieved a significant milestone. If your biggest successes are months in the past, you’ll want to wait until some of your current projects have come to fruition.
• Don’t forget to rehearse before your meeting. At the very least, rehearse by yourself. If you can, ask a trusted friend to listen to your pitch. Consider these nine things you should never say when you’re asking for a promotion.

Which is Best Front end Technology?

To help you better carry out your job as a front end developer, some tool has been created for you. Your succes in this field will be determined by you knowledge of these technology. Learning them might not be easy because new ones are released regular, but it is worth the effort. Here are some of them

1. VUE.JS

Vue.js is a JavaScript library for building web interfaces. Combining with some other tools It also becomes a “framework”. Presently it has over 156K Github stars and left many other top front-end development tools behind. It was first released in 2013. In the last 4-5 years, the progress is significant.

The greatest benefit of Vue is its absence of pedigree. It is fresh and has little baggage. his JavaScript library improves over the mistakes and carries forward the best things about React & Angular.

The way we see it, Vue is lightweight & easy to learn. Hence, getting Vue.js developers on board is really easy despite it being newer than React & Angular.

2. ANGULAR 

Being a Google product, Angular is counted as one of the top front-end development tools for years. With the rapid release of its versions Angular is now much improved and an established name in the web industry.

In October 2019, Angular released its 8th version and Angular 9 is expected to launch May 2020. It has 56.6K stars on Github with a huge community of Angular Developers for support.

 3. BLOCKCHAIN TESTNET

After the arrival of Blockchain technology, businesses are overcoming their various tech challenges successfully using this. They are developing amazing business solutions using Blockchain frameworks.

Testnet is one of the best Blockchain web development tools which works as a substitute for the actual blockchain used to develop real dapps. Blockchain developers can create a new dApp using other blockchain tools like mutichain blockchain, Stellar, Ehtereum Blockchain, Smart contracts, etc.

4. IONIC 2

Yes, here we are talking about top front-end development tools and not mobile. However, many do not know that Ionic 2 is not only meant for cross-platform mobile apps development, it is a great tool for front-end development too. Ionic developers can build native and web-optimized apps. Here are a few advantages of this tool-

– Free and open source
– Good community support including on Slack and StackOverflow
– One code base for all platforms
– High availability of plugins
– Push notifications built-in
– Coded in Angular

5. NPM

Npm is the Node package manager for JavaScript. It helps NodeJS Developers to discover packages of reusable code and assemble them in powerful new ways. This is one of the most used front-end development tools used as a command-line utility for interacting with a said repository that aids in the package. NPM has 15448 stars on GitHub and has many worthy features to go for.

– Discover and reuse over 470,000 free code packages in the Registry
– Encourage code discovery and reuse within teams
– Publish and control access to the namespace
– Manage public and private code using the same workflow

 6. TENSORFLOW

TensorFlow is Google Brain’s second-generation system. Version 1.0.0 was released on February 11, 2017. While the reference implementation runs on single devices, TensorFlow can run on multiple CPUs and GPUs (with optional CUDA and SYCL extensions for general-purpose computing on graphics processing units). TensorFlow is available on 64-bit Linux, macOS, Windows, and mobile computing platforms including Android and iOS.

Its flexible architecture allows for the easy deployment of computation across a variety of platforms (CPUs, GPUs, TPUs), and from desktops to clusters of servers to mobile and edge devices. With the advent of Tensorflow 2.0 now it is even more advanced.

Apart from front-end development, Tensorflow can be used for machine learning development as well.

7. GRID GUIDE

Grid guide is one of the top front-end development tools. It allows creating pixel-perfect grids within designs. It is a simple tool that can unlock very valuable workflows in custom software development.

Some salient features:

– Add guides based on the canvas, artboards, and selected layers
– Quickly add guides to edges and midpoints
– Allows to create duplicate guides to other artboards and documents
– Helps users to create custom grids

8. GRUNT 

Grunt is one of the top front-end development tools when it comes to task automation. It’s a JavaScript task runner, offering both a lot of bundled plugins for common tasks, while still being very extensible, giving you the option to write all kinds of tasks that suit your need. The best comes when you can combine tasks together to create even more powerful ones!

Grunt’s scope goes beyond simply automating front-end related tasks. It has 11730 stars to date and a very useful tool allover.

9. METEOR

Meteor is a full-stack JavaScript framework. It is made up of a collection of libraries and packages which makes it one of the top front-end development tools. It has been built on concepts from other frameworks and libraries to makes it easy to prototype applications. It has 39265 stars on Github.

Here are a few features:

– It makes developing applications efficient
– It comes with several built-in features that contain frontend libraries and NODE js based server
– It speeds up development time significantly on any project
– Meteor offers a MongoDB database and Minimongo, which is written entirely in JavaScript
– Live reloading feature allows refreshing only the required DOM elements

10. GIT EXTENSIONS

Utilizing version control is a must-have for projects of any size now. They are easy to set up and will save you headaches when your developer finds out you both have been working on the same file.

Read Also: By Learning HTML and CSS, How can I Earn Money?

While learning the command line is still recommended since at the very least you will gain an understanding of what happens under the hood, using one for day to day development can take valuable time. Especially if you make an accidental commit to the wrong branch.

Git Extensions, which is a graphical user interface for Git, not only does it allow you to control Git without using the CLI, but you can view the commit history in a graph structure, view the history of files, use a rebase workflow, and much more. That makes it one of the top front-end development tools.

Finally

As we have seen from the above information, a career as a front end is a rewarding one with high demands for your skills. However, a lot of efforts I needed to acquire these skills.

The interent has done a lot to help you in this regard, you have access to free resources, online courses and even a large community of fellow front end developers. You can even look for a mentor to fast track your career.

Now it is up to you, put in the needed efforts and watch your career grow with impressive rewards.