If you want to become a JavaScript developer, we just have to do a few simple steps.
They’re simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. In this article, we’ll look at how we can all become good JavaScript developers by learning some extra knowledge.
Use Typescript
TypeScript is good because it adds some data type annotations and data type checking to our JavaScript so that we know what we’re working with.
It doesn’t modify the JavaScript. Rather, it makes the types of our objects and values clearer so that we don’t have to search for the value everywhere.
The extra type annotations get us the type information from objects so that we can use them to get autocomplete in IDEs and text editors so we don’t have to search for the original definition of the object ourselves.
It also checks if the data types are valid and stop building the code when it finds errors.
Linting
A linter has sets of rules to check if our code meets the standard for clean and easy to read code.
This way, everyone will have an easier time working with our code.
This check is important for big apps since lots of people will work on it.
We just need some standards to follow so that we can get our code clean and clear.
It also checks for old constructors which we shouldn’t use, which is good. Just because they’re there doesn’t mean that we should use them.
DOM Manipulation
If we want to be a front end developer, then learning about DOM manipulation and event handling of elements are must learn knowledge.
We should know about how HTML is parsed in the browser and how the parsed objects can be manipulated.
So we should learn how to add and remove new items from the DOM.
Once we do that, we can learn new front end frameworks with ease.
Frameworks
Once we’re developing apps that are beyond simple practice apps, we need some way to make developing them easier.
This means that we may use some frameworks like Angular and Vue, or React cobbled together with other libraries like React Router to make our own app framework.
Either way, we have to learn them eventually to create complex apps that are maintainable.
They enforce some structure and gives us syntactic sugar to simplify our own code.
Picking the Right Tool
The right tool for the job is important. With JavaScript development, we can just use a good text editor like Visual Studio Code to develop our app.
Visual Studio Code to extend the app so we can do more with it.
Also, we can use a bigger IDE like WebStorm if we wish. Those are all up to us since the project structure doesn’t depend on what program we use to write our code unlike projects in other languages like Java.
Learn New Things
Learning new things is always important. In the last few years, JavaScript has improved a lot, so we have a lot to learn.
We should learn new JavaScript features since they either replace bad old features or add new features that we can use to write cleaner code.
For instance, there’re new array and string methods added in the last few years to help us write cleaner code.
The array’s flat method helps us flatten nested arrays, string’s padStart lets us add extra spaces to the current string to match a certain length.
There’re many things like these and more, so it’s time to learn new things.
Advanced Topics
Advanced topics like iterators and generators are great bonus knowledge to learn. It lets us understand more about arrays and array-like objects and how we can use them with the spread operator and the for...of loop.
In the process, we would also learn about symbols, which is a special primitive data type used for identifiers for methods. Symbol.iterator is a symbol identifier for a special method in iterable objects to return data for the iterable.
Do More Practice
The more we practice, the better that we’ll get and the faster we’ll learn. So we should start writing practice apps to practice our skills until we know what we want to learn inside out.
Conclusion
Beyond the basics, we should learn about things like TypeScript for better type checking.
Also, DOM manipulation is important for front end developers. Front end frameworks like Angular, Vue, and something based on React can be learned easily once DOM manipulation is learned.
As a bonus, advanced knowledge like iterators and generators all can be learned.
Finally, do more practice and we can learn a lot more faster.
