I'm feeling purposeful recently
I've felt particular invigorated since I got a new job last year. The people I work with are much better developers than me and that's not a bad thing. They are teaching me so much and I feel the self-taught education I gained is missing some skills to round me out.
I've come up with some things I'd love to learn in 2019 so I can understand more in our app development and that I can bring more to the table in terms of planning out apps and components better.
Better Foundation in React
I just learned React in October. I never thought I'd be able to learn it and my new job actually taught me. It took about 2 weeks to get through the videos and then a month to feel confident in my skills. So, now in January I'm trying to brush up on the beginners principles that I may have overlooked. Then I want to ease myself into more advanced features. It's probably a strange way to do it but life comes at you fast.
Learn Redux
I have little knowledge of Redux, my colleague is in charge of creating the actions and other Redux features. I'd love to be able to help and make my components in preparation for hooking up to Redux and getting data. In the general scheme of a life, this seems like something good to know at least basically. I'm not expecting to be an expert but to be able to hook up a system for a personal project would feel like a win for me.
Learn About API's and NodeJS
I've made the basic API using NodeJS and Express, but I'd like to learn a bit more. This isn't the most important thing on this list but I really like learning all sides of development. The better understanding I have of the working of backend the better I feel about syncing things up with the front-end.
Understand Technical Side of Authentication
It sounds silly, but I never really thought about authentication. Now that my eyes have been opened I'm determined to learn more about JWT (jsonWebTokens), OAuth, and any other system or version of authentication.
Make better tests — Jest & Enzyme
This is the most important to me right now. My tests are just checking if the components render and don't crash. I'm hoping to make strides in this area because it'll be great to have components with strong tests to catch any errors I've made that could potentially effect the projects I build.
Learn GraphQL
This seems like an upcoming technology that's about to blowup, so I'd like to stay somewhat up-to-date. I'm not sure where I'd use it right now but if people are going to be interested in it then I've got to get eyes on it.
What Else?
Is there anything else to add to the list to become a better Front-End Developer?
Top comments (10)
Be careful though not to add too much on your plate, for you don't need to know 'everything'.
It is far better to be specific on the few stuff you actually really need for a particular job/project and focusing on those than to scratch the surface of many techs/frameworks/libraries without having mastery of any.
Dan Abramov explain that better in this recent post: "Things I Don’t Know as of 2018"
I agree. I was trying to get things that related to working with React and API's mostly. There should probably be an explicit ranking system of importance. I'll be ignorant of more things than I'll have a mastery. I've accepted that. 😁
I've been coding React and was always wondering how the heck I'm supposed to make automated tests on the front-end, thanks for the heads up.
My personal new year resolutions are:
Planning and meeting, planning and meeting, planning and meeting, planning and meeting, coding.
Understand how I should be making automated tests for both the front-end (react) and backend (Laravel) and how to streamline the process on real-life apps.
I always start my apps RESTful with just the REST functions per controller. But then due to constraints of security, complexity and atomicity, I end up with a lot of functions which sometimes end up overlapping or redundant. That needs some retrospective.
Good point with the REST.
I'm watching a YouTube series about RESTful API that so far seems to do a good job with handling redundancy in controllers. It's the 4th video out of 14 so maybe that will change. youtube.com/playlist?list=PL55RiY5...
Nice list. You can add PWA and web components to your list :)
Is that something seperate from React or something to integrate into it. Are there plugins or packages I should focus on?
Yes, you can integrate web components in your react app. You can create common web components that can be integrated in any framework, take a look on stenciljs. About PWA, you can create web apps to work almost like a native app, works offline, display notification, etc.
Thanks! That was a great read. Didn't realize I would still need more security while using JWT. So I'll look into that as well.
Since your bio states that you work with wordpress maybe look into the new Gutenberg editor. You can develop custom blocks in react so that might be a fun experiment :)
That's true. I really meant to do that, great idea!