This article is a spinoff from a question that was asked in one of the Whatsapp groups;
For every beginner, their goal is to learn HTML, CSS, JS, and their related frameworks and hope to get a job… A lot of developers don’t know there’s more to it, things like probably Design Patterns, Continuous Integration, etc, mainly what real companies do. This means there is another advanced roadmap for developers that beginners don’t know, it would be helpful if the volunteers to speak would talk about other technologies that are necessary to be a professional developer.
More often than not, new entrants in tech fall into the trap of thinking that they have to keep up with all the stacks used by their prospective organizations. This keeps them almost in an infinite loop of unnecessary learning.
As a matter of fact, if you continue following this path, you might never come out of the labyrinth. Shebi person wey create Node don give us Deno. Shebi you will still learn it to continue trying to be relevant?
So much has happened in the tech space within a short time that if you tried to follow an approach that worked for others before you, the same could yield no result for you.
For instance, the folks that started before we ever considered making this a path to follow didn’t have the privilege to learn all these shiny stuff. They did not have many tools, libraries, frameworks, stacks, etc. Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript was pretty much all that one needed to know to be a frontend developer.
It is really tasking to be a dev now than before, almost everything is waving at our face and craving for our attention.
Fast forward to now, a lot of stacks are tempting to know how they work, one has to be disciplined enough to pick what one needs per time and move on.
To avoid the pitfall mentioned above, the approach should be:
1. Grab the basics as much as you can. If you are using Bootstrap, ensure you can comfortably build a responsive web page if Bootstrap is taken out of the way. I hope you get the point.
2. Know one or two persons via the ministry of networking, attending meetups/events, and conferences. Man-know-man has come to stay but the majority of people are yet to get it. A lot of openings, before it gets to the general public, it could have already been filled by recommendations
3. Package one or two functional apps. Tech firms are not much as interested about your certifications and grammar as they are in knowing what you have done before. It could be also your involvement/quota in OS projects, which also validates that you have tested the waters.
4. Communicate these skills. You must not wait before you see the openings. That is why the ones we have been seeing are seeking developers with advanced experience.
An effective way to do this is knowing that you are a brand and flow in that mindset from the get-go.
What does this imply? It means as a developer, you should build your career in such a way that once your name is mentioned among your fellow developers and to a prospective client or employer, some certain traits and qualities should be identified with you; things that you are good at, practices that are common to you, your value system. I can’t emphasize this point well enough. Quite a good number of articles have been written on this subject matter.
