Technology Agnostic Tips for Frontend Developers

Things I wish I knew when I was starting out

It’s hard to keep up with the rapidly-evolving web development scene. Technology changes so frequently it’s hard to know what’s relevant. If you ask other developers for advice, you’re going to get a wide range of responses, depending on which tech company or framework they’re currently emotionally invested in.

However, during my 10 years’ plus experience in web development, I’ve found a handful of technology-agnostic principles that continue to remain constant — and getting your head around these will keep you on top of your game, no matter how fast things move.

So with this in mind, here are some things I wish I knew when I was starting out.

Coding is a Method of Communication

In the non-technical world, a code is often thought of as something that can be “cracked”; a puzzle that can be solved. In the programming world, it’s therefore easy to think code is intrinsically cryptic — but this couldn’t be further from the truth. We may write code to instruct machines, but our main goal is to effectively convey meaning to other people.

Experienced developers know that good code is synonymous with good communication. Another person is going to…