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I'm not sure whether that really helps with the stated goal of prioritizing.
There are lots of people on the internet who makes lists of things that junior developers are supposed to learn.
I personally think that your list is better than most, but junior readers have no way to know really.
People who do this kind of lists usually do them with good intentions, but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
There is a reason we don't throw away all traffic signs all at the same place.
What I mean is that the actual effect this has to juniors is too often feeling "I don't know where to start, I am overwhelmed, I have imposter syndrome"
I hear you on this. I should clarify that I'm envisioning this as step 1 - identify the key skills that are actually needed. Step 2 would be the roadmap of which skills to learn.
My hope would also be that in its current state, learners a bit further in their journey can look at the list to see which skills might be missing. Learners starting from scratch probably won't benefit from this current version.
Good list!
Ruby isn't as popular any more and I'm not sure it's worth learning in 2024. I'd replace it with C#. I know you listed C# in the "enterprise languages" list, but it's a general-purpose language that has way more use cases than just enterprise ones, runs on all major platforms, and the best IDE for it (Visual Studio) is free for individual developers.
I'd avoid SOAP, GraphQL and anything cloud (AWS) or containerization (Docker) until the basics are mastered. For a junior, these are "nice to have" rather than important things they should know. GraphQL in particular isn't a "one size fits all" and has particular scenarios where it's useful, and a junior dev won't yet understand the nuance there.
Great feedback. I agree that cloud and containerization should follow other foundations, and point taken that these could be considered "nice to have" for many roles, but it also seems like the bar is moving more in the direction of "gotta have the basics" for those topics.
Agreed on GraphQL, that one would probably fit better beneath "Growth" skills rather than "Foundational."
Congratulations on graduating, and good luck with your job search, Jamey!
Thanks for this. I've been a frontend developer for 4 years, but heard the term "Browser event loop" for the first time today. Only knew about the event loop in Node.js.
Links to helpful resources would be a nice improvement here!
Thanks! Glad it was helpful.
While not linked in this post, we have published some guides recommending specific resources. Generally, our recommendations are comprehensive purpose built programs or learning paths, like App Academy Open, Odin Project, or paid resources like Udacity's Full Stack Nanodegree or a Codecademy career path. Those types of programs tend to be industry-aligned, have a nice flow that builds lesson upon lesson, along with hands-on practice.
But I also hear you on curating resources for the specific topics - would definitely take this list to the next level.
From a Junior I would expect basic SQL knowledge, basic HTML/CSS/JS skills and a good logic.
From the company that is hiring the Jr, I would expect patience and having a experienced developer able to guide the Jr.
Otherwise we fall into the loop of "I'm starting to work, need some experience / Need some Jr with experience to work."
Agree with you that companies need to provide great infrastructure to support juniors - experienced devs to guide them, career mentorship, and some well-defined and contained assignments as they're starting out. From my experience, companies are getting better at this all the time.
For a junior, woah. This is a seriously comprehensive list.