So many Frontend Developers grow fast! Sometimes you can have the feeling that your growing really slow. Today I would like to give you some advice from my personal experience, that will help you grow faster as Frontend Developer.
Spend time
The key thing to grow your skills is “time”. If you think you can grow fast in Frontend Development with only your daily job, I think your wrong! Before you become a real expert in Frontend Development, you have to spend a lot of time.
Become an expert
Some researchers have investigated that after 10.000 hours spent on a specific topic, made you a real expert. This means if you are working 8 hours (5 days a week) on the job, and not in your spare time, it will take you more than 5 years to become that expert. If you invest more free time, you will achieve that a lot faster.
How did I grow
My key to becoming good in Frontend Development is “time”! This is a lesson from my own experience. The more time you will invest, the faster you grow. I’ve always invested a lot of time to grow in my skills. But it was not always easy, but I made my choice when I started Frontend Development, to become an expert.
Mentoring
Mentoring in Frontend Development doesn’t happen a lot in my area. When I started Frontend Development, I felt lost quite some time. It felt like an eternity to learn something. At the moment I found people to mentor and guide me, it helped me to grow a lot faster than before.
My mentor gave me positive feedback on my code, writing techniques, naming conventions, basic JavaScript etc. The simplest thing the did, the sit down with me, opened a browser with the console and started with basic JavaScript. Or checked my code and came up with positive feedback, what I should continue with and with what needed to stop.
In the Mr Frontend Community, we like to give everyone the opportunity to get a mentor. This will help you! Guaranteed!
Stay up-to-date
Staying up-to-date doesn’t mean you have to read everything. That doesn’t work! Stay up-to-date on the topics you feel passionate about or that you use in your daily job as developer.
In my case, it is CSS, Sass, JavaScript, AngularJS and NodeJS. Do I know everything? Absolutely NO! That is not possible! I’m filtering the topics if I can use it in my work or future projects. If not, I don’t spend too much time on reading it.
I’m filtering the topics if I can use it in my work or future projects. If not, I don’t spend too much time on it.
Focus
So the main thing to become an expert is not to know everything about anything. The main thing is to choose wisely your most important topics to focus on. Make sure you have an in-depth knowledge of this topic and spend a lot of time on it.
Thinks about side projects to build with new techniques that you want to master. Only reading is not enough! Experience it, try it, master it. That’s my way to becoming an expert!
You can start a side project with building a application that solve’s on of your problems. Like todo app’s are very popular. Once I built an invoice application with AngularJS and NodeJS. It was really fun! I learned AngularJS and NodeJS a lot better. So it’s up to your imagination what your side project is gonna be!
Hopefully, this helps you to become a real expert!
If you would like to talk with me about this post or want to get the free coaching service in the Mr Frontend Community, please register via mrfrontend.nl for free. ;-)
Originally published at Mr Frontend Blog.
