Frameworks! React, Vue, Angular, Svelte or whatever your choice is. Many of us jump into these frameworks purely out of necessity. React probably being the most popular, with such a large community and promising to make development much easier, faster and for the case of many aspiring/junior developers help you to build projects quickly and achieve the goal of landing your first developer role.
BUT there are many reasons why you should focus on the fundamentals of HTML, CSS and JavaScript before diving head-first into any framework. I've listed 5 important things to consider in no particular order:
1. Fundamentals > Frameworks
Understanding the basics will make you a better developer and is the key to long term success. Knowing how websites are structured using the core foundational skills of HTML, CSS and JavaScript will make you a better well-rounded developer overall. Having a strong foundation with these technologies will ensure that you are able to learn new frameworks and technical concepts much more easily and quicker in the future.
2. Solving Problems is easier
Learning the foundational skills will give you the ability to problem solve much more easily when you come across a bug or an error in your code. It's far easier to debug and fix a problem if you understand how something 'should' work and the potential reasons why it isn't. Understanding the basics also gives you a better understanding of which tools or techniques are best suited for particular projects before you even start writing any code.
3. Efficient Development
Having a solid grasp of the fundamentals allows you to write cleaner, more efficient code, leading to faster development times and a better product overall.
4. Overwhelming
Without having a solid grasp on the fundamentals, frameworks can be very overwhelming. Remember frameworks were created for developers to be able to do things quicker, easier and can therefore be hard for a newbie to understand why certain aspects of these frameworks work in the way they do. Without a strong understanding of the basics, you essentially won't know what problem is that you are trying to solve.
5. More marketable
Having a sound grasp of the fundamentals makes you much more appealing to potential employers. Whilst being proficient in a framework is almost certainly a prerequisite of most job roles these days, having a deep understanding of the basics means you have more options when applying to roles as you will likely be able to learn any framework much easier going forward, as opposed to just learning a particular framework and skimming over the fundamentals.
To summarise, whilst it can be very tempting to rush in and start building projects with the latest and greatest framework, learning the fundamentals will make you better equipped to solve problems, learn new skills quickly and be more marketable to future employers!
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