Things to know before stepping in to JavaScript web development!
A brief beginner introduction
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Hello Everyone!
This is my first article in a series of articles where I will share the steps for beginning with learning JavaScript web development skills.
I’m sure everyone might have a gist of knowledge about the use of HTML and CSS. Which are the basic units of every web development. In this post I will walk you through some generic necessities of how a web development should be structured and what are the prominent JavaScript web development frameworks which you can learn.
1. SPAs
Single Page Applications — You might have came across web pages where the click on the links will not load the entire web page but just updates the current page with the new content. These type of applications are called SPA. SPA’s does not restrict a web application to have only one page rather it provides the option to add multiple pages through routing which serves as logical pages.It is always better to start with the SPA approach, this is because when your application grows it is necessary to use the resources in the right way without creating too much load on the network, and SPAs achieve just that. (The concept of Multi page routing and navigation are a topic for another article)
2. Mobile first development
With the exponential surge in the use of mobile applications and other small screen devices, the need to accommodate web pages for each device can be really cumbersome if we are developing the application in traditional way (i.e Developing in a laptop/PC and then extending it to fit other smaller screens). That is why every web development strategy should begin with Mobile first development. As the name implies, the web applications should be developed to be responsive for different screen sizes rather than fitting to the screen of your development device . There are several inbuilt and third party libraries available that help with making this possible. You can check the compatibility of your web application through the development tools of the browser you are using.If you are using Google Chrome, press F12 key and click on the device toolbar on the top left corner.
Once you click on it you’ll get an option to try out different screen sizes available through the “Responsive” drop down option as shown in the image below.
You can go ahead and try that out in this page. All the Medium screens are developed in Mobile first development structure!
3.Prominent JavaScript development frameworks
JavaScript is a client side programming language which conforms to the latest ECMAScript standards (ES6+) to create custom client side scripts. Coupled with Node.js we can also build server side scripts as well. It’s compatibility and ease of programming makes JavaScript the most used web development language. There are several JavaScript frameworks which help us to structure our development process. The top 3 JavaScript frameworks are
- Angular
- React.js
- Vue.js
Learning any one of the above framework will be a huge asset to you in terms of your knowledge and job seeking scenarios. You can follow my next article to see a brief comparison of these three frameworks and get a simple hands on working on them.
4.Choice of IDEs
IDEs make your development life easier with numerous useful extensions which help you code better and faster. The top IDEs for Javascript development are as follows
- Visual studio code
- IntelliJ IDEA
3. WebStorm
4. Sublime Text
I prefer VS code over other IDEs because of it’s light weight structure, less load on CPU and also it’s prominent dark theme. (You know the saying about bugs and light right? :P)
4. Do you need certifications to land a web developer job?
There are numerous certifications available for each of the framework I mentioned above but, do you really need those? I would say Nahhh!!. You can start out with zero knowledge on web development to developing and hosting a website all through personal learning from web. So basically it is not a necessity to do a certification in order to be a web developer. Even in the job perspective the certifications play a very little role in getting you selected, it is your code and the knowledge about the code that lands you in the job. You can follow my upcoming posts to learn more about Angular and React, From a simple hello world application to diving deeper!
You can start with reading the below article from W3Schools which provides a lot of beginner information about HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
https://www.w3schools.com/whatis/
I hope you got some understanding on how to structure a web development and the JavaScript frameworks available. Keep an eye out for my articles for more web development posts and hands-on exercises.
Thank you and Happy learning!
