Where to start working as a web developer

There are three main employment options: freelance, web development studio and work on the customer side.

Aleksey Vidyakin names a web development studio as the optimal place for the first job, since it is among narrow specialists and various tasks that it is easiest to grow from simple to complex. But at the same time, at first you need to be prepared for a lot of routine.

“As a trainee (trainee), I did the work that more experienced employees did not want to take on,” recalls Alexey. – Basically, these were edits from the customer, that is, additions to the site that you just need to make according to a certain template, without breaking anything. The additional value of such work is that you begin to understand how real projects work in your studio.”

Starting freelancing from scratch, it’s easy to get stuck doing low-paying, mundane tasks. At the same time, there will not be a leader who is interested in your professional growth next to you. But for an experienced frontend developer, freelancing, especially on international exchanges, can open up many opportunities.

Working on the customer side can be a great start, but it’s worth looking for a company that will grow with the experts. IT departments in large companies are often created to quickly solve complex problems and hire expensive and efficient specialists to do this.

The trajectories of how they come to the frontend are different. Read the story of Mark Sobolev, who served in the police and now develops educational services.

Where to begin?

“For many, including myself, frontend was a hobby before it became a profession. Creating from scratch your first, far from ideal site, you can understand whether this activity fascinates you. But at your first job, especially at first, you will need more patience and attentiveness than creativity, says Alexey. “In order not to burn out at this stage and grow into really creative and high-paying tasks, it is important to have an initial interest in web development.”

The best way to understand if you are interested in frontend development is to take it and try it. Here are some useful links to get you started:

Front-end developer (from English front-end developer, Russian spelling and pronunciation options: front-end developer, front-end developer, front-end developer) is a programmer who develops the user interface, that is, the external public part of the site in the browser. The profession is suitable for people with a mathematical mindset.

What does a front-end developer do

A front-end developer is a layout designer and a programmer rolled into one, a hero of style and code who creates a user interface. The main task of a front-end developer is to translate the design layout into an easily readable and extensible code, to make everything on the site or in the web application work quickly and conveniently for the user. The word “front” in the name of the profession indicates that the front-end developer is at the forefront with the end user and is responsible for the external functionality of the application with which the user contacts. The program code on the server is handled by another specialist – a back-end developer. For your information: there is a universal specialist who works simultaneously on the front-end and back-end. It’s called a full stack developer.

The main tools of the front-end developer in the web:

• JavaScript;
• HTML;
• CSS.

This is minimal knowledge, but each of the elements has its own settings. Above HTML – template engines, above CSS – preprocessors, above JavaScript – both language extensions, such as TypeScript, and various libraries, including libraries / frameworks for building single-page applications (single page application): React, Vue.JS, Angular.

JavaScript is the main language of the front-end developer on the web, in which he programs user interfaces. Frontenders often have to deal with site layout: writing HTML code and CSS styles to present information in a form that matches the designer’s layout and is understandable to all browsers.

The main task of a front-end developer depends on the project, but I think it’s still writing logic in JavaScript. For layout, sometimes they even hire special people – layout designers who only translate the design into HTML and CSS code. Often layout designers have minimal knowledge of JavaScript, which allows them to add elements of interactivity to the site. To develop simple sites, such as landing pages, full-fledged front-programmers are often not needed, but the skills of layout designers are enough. Front-end programmers often don’t like typesetting and sometimes they don’t know how to do it with the same quality and speed as layout designers.

Sometimes layouts do not contain all the elements to develop. In this case, the front-end developer can turn on his design skills to take into account all the technical details and nuances, but it is more efficient and rational to entrust this work to a narrow specialist.

If the layout lacks elements for development, then the programmer returns to the designer and says: “I need such an icon, but here the design is not drawn for such a case,” and the designer finishes the necessary things, or says where to get them from. A front-end developer can act as a business analyst, figure out what functionality is not taken into account, and finish it on his own, but, of course, it is always better to contact colleagues for advice, at least so that they are aware of the changes and this is in the future came as no surprise to them.