Senior Front-End Developers Share Advice for Juniors: What Would You Add?

I’m not senior, I’m mid level but my biggest advice would be to learn at your own pace in your own time and don’t be discouraged by how long it can take to learn.
I fell into the trap as a junior of working on a team of more experienced developers than I, who knew more than me and I wanted to be as good as them and learn multiple languages and frameworks and I eventually burnt myself out as I took on too much at once.

Find the one thing you love and want to learn first and really focus on being your best in that, once you have a good understanding and you’re ready to learn another language then move onto that. I always have a list of things I want to learn and it’s all very exciting to start with but giving your focus to learning one language/framework at a time gives you the ability to really be the best you can be on that one thing. Quality over quantity.

I also learnt in Vue.js before I learnt real vanilla JavaScript so in my spare time I do vanilla html, css and JavaScript courses for fun mostly, even though I go over things I already know, you’ll be surprised how much you forget or new things you’ll pick up.

W3Schools, FreeCodeCamp and Wes Bos does some great courses.

Don’t be afraid to google things or ask for help when you need. As we’ve all started from the beginning.

Lastly If you can, find yourself a mentor. Mine is my current Team Lead and the support I’ve received has only given me the confidence and helped me grow to where I am now.

Learning to code is hard work but it’s also exciting and fun. Finding your passion and pride in your work is the best feeling and it makes all the hard times worth it.

1) Consult MDN before Google and StackOverflow. It is the authoritative source of information on web technologies.
2) Find and follow authorities in the domain such as:

• Kyle Simpson (Getify)
• Will Sentance
• Sarah Drasner
• Lea Verou
• Douglas Crockford (JSON)
• Kevin Power (CSS on YouTube)
• Rachel Andrew
• Nicholas C. Zakas
• Dr. Axel Rauschmayer (2ality)
• Jake Archibald
• Sara Soueidan
• Addy Osmani

3) Start home projects and investigations - keep learning.

Development is ultimately about people, the ones maintaining your code with you, the ones testing and the ones using it. Be mindful of them.

Unless you are working alone, make good use of your team and let the team make good use of you.

Saying this based on my 9+ years of work, both on frontend and backend, may not be agreed by everyone :)

• Don't just estimate coding tasks, there are other activities required which also need time like Jira hygiene, unit test, dev testing, something went wrong during development
• Always try to resolve issues on your own, it will help you on longer run.
• Understand business, coding is not everything.
• Be hungry and be curious
• Make a habit of reading and understanding code written by someone else, be it good or bad. With every read you will either learn how to code or how not to code.
• Don't criticize others' work because they might be more intelligent than you but were limited due to tech at their time or project timelines to do coding due diligence.

Happy coding!!

• I believe juniors are very talented and more skilled in some aspects.
• Just learn to take responsibility and organise your work. it's as simple as that it's the only thing - that saperts you from seniors

I would just like to thank you all willing to share quality knowledge and save myself time naming everybody

Probably already mentioned but I'll focus on the job world.
I'd say to keep positive about failing a job interview or not being selected for a job simply. It's not your technical skills that are bad most of the time, it's just that they look for specific profile for a job. Even if it feels negative, just take it as a good learning opportunity.

I'm not a senior, but mid-level, and here's my advice. Do not underestimate HTML and CSS. JS frameworks will come and go, but mastering the basics will get you even further, no matter how redundant it sounds. After all, there is no web-page without HTML/CSS.

• There are more than 100 HTML tags for a reason. Learn them. Use them. Don't just use divs and spans.
• Practice DRY (don't repeat yourself) but use the least complex abstraction necessary to achieve it (e.g. if you can get the job done by declaring a function, then declare a function; don't abstract it out into factory patterns or some other crazy thing just to make yourself look smart).
• Prefer using the native features of your programming environment before bringing in a dependency (e.g. use vanilla JS instead of a JS library where possible).
• Prefer upgrading existing programming interfaces rather than replacing them or abstracting them beyond recognition (e.g. use progressive enhancement instead of replacing the web with frameworks wherever possible).
• Build technical credit rather than technical debt (i.e. when forced to choose between fast, good, and cheap, it's almost always better to choose good before the others; otherwise you'll lose fast and cheap too in the long run due to technical debt).
• It's usually best to avoid JS frameworks on the frontend. Most web apps don't need them. Vanilla JS + a collection of small JS libraries is usually better.
• Learn the frameworks anyway. Even though it's over-engineering to use them most of the time, most jobs require you to know them because some overpaid architect over-engineered their app, so you gotta learn how to use the frameworks and be a good citizen of the framework's best practices in order to be a good team player. Some day when you're an architect, don't repeat the mistake: prioritize architectural simplicity and do your junior devs a favor.

Don't listen to too much advise and never follow it blindly. Be your own authority.

Don't listen (too much) advices from senior devs, just practice, practice and practice, you'll find your own way !

Try to find a balance between trying hard to solve the problems by yourself and asking for help right away.

You'll learn much faster if you report your findings to your seniors and receive feedbacks about them.

Don't rush. This isn't an sprint but a marathon.

We all have been in the "counting-each-month-of-experience-so-I-can-be-tagged-as-senior-as-soon-as-possible" but that isn't as important as enjoying the journey.

I would say to stay curious.

I am a senior backend developer, but as team leader I see about front-end development too. I have seen horrors. I have many tips, I think.

1. Don't blindly believe the things you read. I have read sooo much things like "NodeJS is a great performer" or "React is more suitable for complex projects than Vue/Svelte/XXX", and so it happens that both are lies. As far as I can tell, Vue and Svelte at least, can do anything React can, and can do it simpler. I have asked to the authors of that phrase for explanations, and nothing comes up. The NodeJS one is a blatant lie too. Do you know that there are over 200 other sever setups that beat NodeJS? That's the fact. Yes, I think NodeJS beats 200 other server setups, but would you say that is "great performance"? I wouldn't. I say it's OK. That's it.

2. If something is called "dangerously", think 3 times before using it.

3. This one comes in hand with the previous one: If you are using a component framework, then avoid dynamic HTML generation like the plague. Is this not why you are using the framework in the first place???

4. Redux is not for everything. The team of contractors @ work stored everything in Redux. Every Thing. When I had to work a bug out, it was such a mess I ended up removing the data out of Redux, and voilá, it worked with regular React states. I asked: "Guys, I'm no front-end dev, but isn't Redux for data that is needed in multiple places only?" To which they replied: "We just decided to store everything there".

5. Learn your configuration system. If you are using dotenv and .env files, use them well. However, this is a sub-optimal configuration system. There are better ones out there, including wj-config, the one I made. Designed for modern JavaScript and works identically client or server-sided.

That's just from the top of my head.