Front-end developers are multiskilled creators that must strike a balance between the technical and the creative to achieve optimized results that bring out the best in a product. While creating a stunning website may seem easy enough, it’s quite a labor-intensive process that requires an immense amount of skill and patience.
Front-end developers are essential members of a web development team. They must dedicate themselves to mastering the principles of user experience design, hone their web programming skills, and practice testing and debugging their creations.
1. Empathy
Empathy is not simply a method for attaining more intimate relationships but is rather an invaluable skill that provides deeper insight into both people and products. For developers, empathy gives a greater level of context and understanding to the needs of the client and creates an environment of operational clarity.
Empathy is truly better understood as the mechanism through which we can understand the unspoken. It is a key skill demonstrated by the best of every field. Especially in the case of front-end development where it is most important to understand the underlying needs of the client to both reflect their wishes and to articulate their vision.
Front-end development is centrally focused on connecting the core principle for the product to the consumer or user. This means that there is a double duty of empathy required by each developer to assess the needs of users and clients accurately.
Empathy is no longer a term to be scared of or mock but is instead a wonderful tool that is a must-have skill for front-end developers.
2. Adaptability
Adaptability is a critical skill for front-end developers as it allows them to change with the needs of the client and the revolutions in technology. Adaptability is more than simply being able to program in multiple languages.
Instead, it is about a prevailing philosophy of open change alongside technical proficiency. It is the ability to incorporate change without interrupting progress. It is a skill that is beyond vital for every front-end developer to master.
3. Lateral thinking
Much like adaptability, lateral thinking is the ability to apply problem-solving skills from a vast array of disciplines to the task at hand.
Utilizing your entire lexicon of skills to evolve and solve a product’s problems is what makes a great front-end developer stand out from the rest.
4. Collaboration
Collaboration is an essential skill in all parts of life. Incorporating the ideas and thoughts of others around you is absolutely critical in creating products that target well beyond your own imagination. From the small to the large, each opinion has some value whether it be something fantastical or inordinately mundane.
No matter the case, collaboration is the skill that highlights the best of the best front-end developers.
5. Expertise in web programming
All of these design and communication skills can only be properly leveraged if there the front-end developer possesses technical skills as well.
The front-end developer does not need to be an expert at managing the server or creating backend scripts, but they do need to have a fundamental understanding of how the backend interacts with the front end.
This means mastery of frontend programming languages:
Front-end developers should also understand how to use frameworks like:
- React
- Angular
- JQuery
- Emberjs
Conclusion
Developing an attractive and engaging website is no simple feat. The most effective websites feel so intuitive and unobtrusive we barely notice their design. Front-end developers have a major hand in making this happen. Without adept front-end developers, it’s nearly impossible to craft a winning website.
The best front-end developers are creative and adaptable. They understand how to make seemingly disparate technologies and modalities fit together. They must be expert web programmers, leveraging HTML, JSS, and JavaScript to build out designs.
A general understanding of the back-end and front-end frameworks is also essential. The top front-end developers are collaborative, working with many members of the development team to make the final product vision a reality.
