Pillar of the creation of websites and mobile apps, the developer front end must adapt to a rapidly changing environment. Beyond the programming languages specific to his profession, he must increasingly open up to collaborative and monitoring tools. What are the essential trends in 2021? Hard and soft skills, what are the most prominent skills? Whether you are a beginner or experienced, what training should you follow to stay on top?
Among the 820 IT professions listed by INSEE, the developer front end has the wind in its sails. Normally, it is the basis of any website and mobile app. Over the years, this developer has been forced to expand and enrich his skills portfolio, in order to follow technological developments and the practices inherent to his profession.
It wasn't that long ago that people simply asked him to master the arcana of HTML, CSS style sheets, and maybe a little jQuery to create interactive websites. In 2021, that is no longer enough! The skills demanded by companies and recruiters relate to the mastery of new tools: frameworks extending the range of possibilities, collaborative work tools, not to mention skills in design, mobile web and database. Suddenly, the universe of front end has become very varied and covers many areas. Here are the different facets.
Developer front end : sa mission in 2021
If the mission of a developer front end has greatly enriched over time, the core business has not changed: it still involves building user interfaces for sites and web or mobile applications. The image of an iceberg is often used to describe this profession, similar to that of the web integrator.
The visible part of the iceberg is what a web user sees, the user interface (front end or front stack) when he visits a site or when he uses an app on his mobile phone. The part forehead is made up of two complementary sub-assemblies: programming, on the one hand, and design and its ergonomics on the other. This visible part is made by the developer front end.
The invisible part of the iceberg corresponds to everything that the user does not see (back end or back stack), the programs that run on servers and the bases where the data is stored. This is the domain of the developer back end.
And what do you call a developer who has mastered both parts of the iceberg? This is the developer full stack. Rarer, this profile is much more sought after and therefore more profitable.
Each type of developer corresponds to a specific work environment.
The languages of front end: make me a design!
The design of a site or app is designed by artistic directors, graphic designers and UX designers (User Interface). They combine their stylistic layout talents.
Le front end designate is a developer who works in collaboration with these professionals with software like Photoshop, InDesign, XD, etc. to build models, cut them out and provide page templates. It can also be limited to graphic boards and leave the cutting to third parties.
Le front end designer masters HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but his level of JavaScript is limited to building the web interface.
However, with the evolution of HTML and CSS to HTML 5 and CSS3, the wealth of graphical instructions has become complex.
Not to mention that HTML semantics must deal with the requirements of Internet referencing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A developer front end with SEO skills friendly is therefore particularly appreciated today.
It is also common to upgrade your CSS knowledge to new languages, such as LESS preprocessors (Leaner Sstyle Sheets) or SASS (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) with its SCSS syntax, which make CSS writing much easier, more organised and more productive.
Frameworks, the essentials of 2021
With the arrival of powerful frameworks dedicated to forehead such as Vue.js, a front designer can build its web interface and produce instructions that until now were reserved for JavaScript developers. The designer tends more and more towards the world of the developer. What part of the work should then be entrusted to the designer? Which part should be entrusted to the developer?
The answer depends on each project. The choice of development frameworks should not be made lightly, as it can have serious consequences for a company. Thus, certain frameworks like Angular require a high level of skill on the part of the developer. Before being fully operational, a developer will need to spend time training, which will impact the company's TCO. Added to this is the risk of not finding a qualified developer and of not being able to keep them within the company. Conversely, the Vue.js framework appeals to many companies because it remains simple and allows for faster production.
Other tools that have become essential: Bootstrap and frameworks dedicated to specific designs such as Material UI or Material design. These tools make it easier to create content responsive design able to adapt to different screen formats (computers, tablets, mobiles, etc.), touchscreen or not.
Faced with the strong demand for web development, the developer front quickly turned to working frameworks. Like those of back end (Zend, Symfony, Laravel, etc.), they allow rapid and standardized development.
Angular, React or Vue.js?
Today's developer must have knowledge of one of the three most popular frameworks: Angular (Google), React (Facebook) or Vue.js. Learning these frameworks is quite complex: knowledge of ES6, object programming, even mastery of MVC (Model-View-Controller) development. The developer forehead is close to the requirements required by thick client developers. Some have a background as a Java or .NET developer.
There is also a trend for fans of Vanilla, the pure version of a language. Thus, developers are moving away from frameworks and putting the emphasis back on the power of JavaScript alone. Indeed, with the arrival of HTML5, JavaScript manages data storage (WebSQL or Embedded, localStorage), multithreaded (Web Worker), network protocols (WebSocket), drawing or communication APIs (WebRTC)… the possibilities are vast.
The challenges of the web developer strictly speaking
Opposite of front end designer, web developer uses JavaScript language a lot. Its skills have evolved significantly, with an increasingly strong demand for web applications. To meet these needs, the W3C also evolved JavaScript together
with HTML5. The developer looking for object programming can today rely on new JavaScript languages: EcmaScript (ES6) and TypeScript from Microsoft.
Unfortunately, to manage compatibility issues between browsers, the web developer must now rely on transcoders. These are kinds of compilers like Babel, allowing you to generate universal JavaScript.
Another challenge: it must increasingly enter into an industrial coding process, with version management in Git, and in publication using package production tools like webpack.
Mobile front end
Among the developers front end, we can also consider developers of native and hybrid mobile applications. The development of native applications relies on specific languages: Java or the Flutter SDK for Android, Objective-C and Swift (Apple) for iOS, C# (Xamarin from Microsoft) or the React Native framework. With such languages, the developer must use specific development workshops: Visual Studio Code (Microsoft), Android Studio or Xcode. At this stage, CSS skills are not necessary.
There is also another category of mobile applications for which web developers can provide their expertise: hybrid applications. Mobile screens are designed around web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) allowing the front end to cover mobile needs. In this case, the developer must master tools like Apache Cordova or the Ionic framework, both open source.
Working method: knowing how to master collaborative tools
No more profile of the lone wolf who develops in his corner! The developer front end teamwork. Whether with product teams to understand needs, design teams to know what the interfaces will look like, SEOs, web editors and developer teams back end to work on the data. As a result, he is familiar with collaborative tools: messaging systems like Slack or Mattermost and mutual aid platforms between IT professionals like StackOverFlow. Developers earn points by helping others, a quality valued by recruiters. The latter are also sensitive to developers active on its social networks or who publish on GitHub, which is a guarantee of notoriety.
Permanent watch
Technologies and practices change rapidly. In this context, the developer front end must remain on permanent watch to identify developments in its profession, the emergence of tools, new languages, follow the evolution of browsers, etc. This monitoring operation uses different tools: RSS feeds, Twitter or specialized sites.
There are also specialized conferences dedicated to forehead. Appearing first in the United States, they were emulated in France with meetups like Paris Web, KiwiParty or BlendWebMix. ORSYS is not to be outdone with its JavaScript JET seminar launched two years ago and which, given its success, meets the expectations of companies.
