Top 5 skills every developer should have

Good day guys, the life of a web developer is certainly an intriguing one, as a web developer you are charged with coming up with solutions to challenges and problems and not just crude solutions, but innovative and creative solutions that can be applied as fast as possible. It is important for one to have a skill set that will serve one in situations like this, so i compiled this list of soft skills that i think is required for one to be a highly skilled web developer.

Problem Solving

Like i said earlier web developers are charged with providing solutions to problems and in the world of web development there is not scarcity of problems, every new day, every task or project will present with it some challenge to your skill set, attitude, work ethic etc. And thus it is required that as a web developer you develop and hone your problem solving skills. The world of coding/programming revolves around problem solving, the more problems that you can provide solutions to, the more valued you are by your boss, client and colleagues. How does one grow this problem solving skills? It is simple, just try and do something you would consider difficult or challenging, the more you attempt challenging tasks, the better you get at solving problems because at some point you would learnt how to work around many situations and scenarios such that when you face them at work, you will be experienced enough in dealing with the situation or task and you seamlessly just have an answer to the problem.

Critical Thinking

It is important that as a web developer that you are some one that spends some time thinking, and i don't mean thinking about random stuffs, i mean thinking about how you approach a problem, task, project. You might have code that does something you want, however if you spend some time and analyze your solution to the problem you might find flaws in your solutions, you might find that your solution can still be further refined or maybe you missed out one or two things in your solution. Critical thinking will also help you avoid situations where you have to discard solutions that you spent hours working on and starting from scratch because if you really think about it before you write it a lot of oversight will be avoided and you would see how much it fits or doesn't fit before you implement it and not the other way around.

Innovation and Creativity

When you have a problem you want to solve, it is not just okay to provide a crude solution to it, it will help your reputation and skill set if every time you can think of a new way to solve an old problem because we can't always be doing the same thing all the time. You have to show the ability to think out of the box and provide new solutions to old problems or why else should your boss or client value you? They might as well get someone that can provide the same solution since it is all too ordinary, however if your solution is out of the box then your boss or client will trust you produce something great every time it is asked of you. You also have to show a certain level of creativity when you work, that is the ability to bring that new solution to life and that will require you to be willing, inquisitive and ambitious enough to actually try to go against the norm.

Communication

As a developer we often focus on our coding skills a lot and we take for granted things like communication skills. Communication skills are essential to success in anything one is doing and web development is no different, and by communication i don't just mean talking. Communication involves much more that, it includes our listening and understanding skills, because communication involves ability to listen and understand a message in the manner it was intended. So it is advised that if your listening skills are not up to so great, you should take some time to work on them. We also need to work on our communication skills so that we can effectively share our ideas, experiences, challenges and knowledge with other developers, clients or our boss. There's a reason why communication is an aid to trade, no business can take place without communication, clear and effective communication leads to successful business, even if you are an employee you are still in business with your employer.

Multitasking

In this modern era of web development, web developers either front-end or back-end are tasked with a lot of responsibilities at work and during the learning phase. There are so much tools, frameworks and languages that a developer is required to be comfortable working with, so it is important for web developers to know how to handle and switch between multiple tasks/projects within the same time frame. This will improve your overall awareness and productivity if you can strike a balance or get into a pattern that you can fit into easily. This skill is also very important to freelancers because if you are good at what you do, you might have more than one project that you are working on and it will required of you to effectively manage both projects simultaneously and still meet up with deadline. If you are not so good at multitasking i would advise you to spend some time developing it, it can help you get more projects done or learn more frameworks or skills within the same time frame.