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6 Mistakes You Might Be Making As A New Web Developer & How To Avoid Them

Emma Bostian ✨ on February 25, 2019

Learning web development is intimidating. There are so many resources and tutorials that it can quickly seem overwhelming. It’s often diffic...

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Juha-Matti Santala • Feb 25 '19

Great post!

I do disagree with this however

But one of the biggest mistakes most beginner developers make is jumping straight into learning these tools without a strong understanding of JavaScript.

There are different approaches to learning. I started from a very theoretical point of view and wanted to have good base understanding before moving forward. I ended up not building a lot of things because there was always so much to learn.

My suggestion for any beginner developer or junior is just to build things. Don't worry about tools, don't worry about making things perfect. Just build things. When you do, you'll learn about all sorts of things related to software development. It also makes it easier to understand the core things of Javascript because you have something to relate that knowledge to.

I tried to understand the this weirdness in Javascript for a long time. Finally after I had a lot of experience with building things without fully understanding it and encountering the issues first hand, it was much easier to understand how it works.

So I would say that both approaches are fine for a beginner developer, it all depends on what's the best way for you to learn.

Wendy Kelly • Feb 25 '19

As someone who has been diligently learning and building for a year, I so appreciate your calling out the "this weirdness"
It's not just me, then?
I keep reading /practicing hoping it will make perfect sense soon.
From now on, I am going to move toward acceptance.

Peter Sylwester • Feb 25 '19

The concept of this may be much easier to grasp when using fundamental JavaScript. A complex construction can mask the scope (to which this refers), and frameworks compound this with layers of abstraction that can be difficult for a novice to unravel. It's true that different people learn in different ways, but any one person can learn in different ways too—if one way isn't working, perhaps it's time to try another.

Juha-Matti Santala • Feb 25 '19

What I mean with my this example is that just reading through the explanation of how this works is not gonna stick or have that much of a meaning until I have used it a lot and maybe encountered a few issues. That's why I learn by doing and then coming back to the material to learn: it gives me something real to attach my new knowledge with and not just theoretical textbook knowledge.

Raounak Sharma • Mar 5 '19

I also kind of agree with you. It gives a sense of accomplishment when you build something, which eventually motivates you to do more and more.

And I am a great believer that, in this way beginners first write the bad code, and this is the only way to make them understand why some practices are called as bad practices. And by struggling themselves they get to know why some ways of writing code can help them.

Emma Bostian ✨ • Feb 25 '19 • Edited

I meant to update this. I copied this over from Medium and forgot to change this part. Agreed.

Ryan Smith • Feb 25 '19

In addition to semantic HTML being more accessible, I also think it is easier to read and update.

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>...</title>
</head>
<body>
  <header>
    <nav>
      ...
    </nav>
  </header>

  <h1>...</h1>

  <section>
    <h2>...</h2>
    <article>...</article>
  </section>

  <aside>
    ...
  </aside>

  <footer>
    ...
  </footer>
</body>
</html>

vs.

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>...</title>
</head>
<body>
  <div>
    <div>
      ...
    </div>
  </div>

  <div>...</div>

  <div>
    <div>...</div>
    <div>...</div>
  </div>

  <div>
    ...
  </div>

  <div>
    ...
  </div>
</body>
</html>

As classes and IDs are added, the div example becomes a mess very quickly.

Peter Sylwester • Feb 25 '19

Another advantage of semantic HTML is that CSS selectors make a lot more sense. For instance, article section h2 is both legible and abstract-enough to specifically style every heading of every section within an article—leaving all other headings alone, and without requiring a single ID or class!

Mehdi Vasigh • Feb 28 '19

How often do you actually target elements in CSS using tag name though? With a content heavy website or a blog I can see that, but as soon as your application gets more complex you're going to want to use class names anyway to keep your CSS flat and stay out of specificity hell.

Ryan Smith • Feb 26 '19

That is a great point as well. Having those semantic names instead of having a vague class name definitely helps the CSS readability as well.

David Joseph Kamer • Feb 25 '19

CSS classes should be descriptive, so that even when a div is appropriately used, it's self documenting.

Ryan Smith • Feb 26 '19

Agreed!

rhymes • Feb 25 '19

Many employers may even see jQuery as an impediment to a candidate, because it can show a lack of understanding of core JavaScript concepts.

It's interesting how the sentiment shifted in just a few years but the web is so much better now than when it needed jQuery. The fact that jQuery is not developed anymore because it's feature complete it's a testament to that.

Good thing we're not too attached to technologies :)

But one of the biggest mistakes most beginner developers make is jumping straight into learning these tools without a strong understanding of JavaScript

This is part marketing, part human nature I guess. We're attracted by shiny things and by hype. In addition job offers use keywords to simplify for understandable reasons

Bootstrap is a UI framework for building websites.

Bootstrap's gotta go :D They've recently removed the jQuery dependency but stil...

Good pointers Emma!

David Joseph Kamer • Feb 25 '19

Bootstrap is not a bad thing. Many employers are looking for bootstrap knowledge, and a portfolio often looks incomplete w/o something like bootstrap in it. I'm more refering to react-bootstrap though

rhymes • Feb 25 '19

Didn't say it's bad, I've used it for years!

I'm not particularly attached to it though, I think it has already seen its heyday and due to advancements in CSS it is less needed.

Sites using Bootstrap, be it the original version or the Vue/ReactJS declined versions, all suffer from the same thing: they really look like Bootstrap websites :D

Like when you visits someone's place and you both have the same furniture because you both shop at IKEA ;-)

David Joseph Kamer • Feb 25 '19

haha, very true, but a lot of startups or smaller companies want to look like everyone else. There is a certain amount of professionalism in looking similar the competition. I'm not saying I like it personally, but many businesses want to look "professional" and so they stick with something that adds a "standard" to their website...

Comment deleted

Emma Bostian ✨ • Feb 25 '19

Divs are useful for laying out container elements. Any functional component with a respective semantic element should not be in a div. And if a component is wrapped in a div, it needs an aria label or labelledby attribute.

Comment deleted

Jamees Bedford • Feb 25 '19

Great article.

One thing I always mention to people though is to never ignore the things you talk about! It's all too common for new developers to try and avoid JQuery and Bootstrap all together, but you are going to likely come across one of them at some point working on legacy code bases.

C.S. Rhymes • Feb 25 '19

Maybe sometimes it’s ok to rely on jQuery and a framework as it gives the new developer a sense of accomplishment and they can learn what is possible and then take the time to learn how to do it for themselves in JavaScript.

Miguel Piedrafita • Mar 4 '19

I turned this article into audio using Blogcast!

If you want, you can add this👆 player to your article by adding the following code to the top:

{% blogcast 326 %}

Emma Bostian ✨ • Mar 5 '19

Aw thank you!

Danilo Miranda • Feb 25 '19

I love this article, specially when you mention relying on JavaScript frameworks. I did this myself when I was starting to learn web development and it almost destroyed my experience.
I started with react right off the bat and at that beginning it was really hard to grasp its concepts. For example I thought that filter and map were a react thing

So I ditched out from react and started focusing on pure JavaScript and while learning it a lot of things from react started becoming clearer for me

Sara Alfred • Feb 26 '19

I am new to this web development field and Jquery plays an important part but I am not able to pick it well and many of the aspects related to Jquery are well explained by you. Kindly tel me any tutorials related to jquery. Thanks for sharing such a great bag of knowledge.

Kevin Woblick • Feb 25 '19 • Edited

Excellent writeup and good advise for newbies.
One thing I would like to add: the mistake of not keeping things simple.

Using React or any other JS framework for a simple website may be too much.
Using a huge icon library to display three icons may be too much.
Using a huge CSS framework for 5 elements and some basic layout may be too much.
Yet people build huge stacks and add so much bloat to the simplest websites.

If you can reduce the number of dependencies, whatever they are, do it.
If you can reduce the number of elements/modules on your site without striping off important information, do it.

Keep things simple wherever you can and where it makes sense, because things are just complicated and complex enough.

Juha-Matti Santala • Feb 25 '19 • Edited

For a junior building a portfolio project for example, I wouldn't worry about too much using tools that are an overkill. Many of my personal projects use React or Vue even if they could be simple static sites with vanilla JS. Why? Because it allows me to experiment and learn since my side projects rarely grow big enough to warrant the use of these tools.

In "real life" apps, I totally agree.

Aravindan • Feb 26 '19

Excellent post!

But, I feel this is not just for new web developer, even Experienced developer are still sticking with Frameworks to carry out their development without knowing much of fundamentals (thats how I was a year back).

This 6 covers exactly almost everything!

Jasond_Official • Feb 26 '19

Great write-up on the order and fundamental recommendations. I remember when I first started diving into JS, and I would inspect minified files, totally getting lost in anonymous and reduced variables, etc. Later realizing the same thing could be achieved in an understandable way, by just naming everything in a readable way (non reduced).

Fabio Ricardo Charry • Feb 25 '19

Thank you, Emma, here in Colombia there is a huge demand for FullStack developers, employers request for different skills and a ton of experience on specific frameworks for different languages. What can you suggest for people like me that are trying to move into WebDev without experience, and with that kind of requirements?

Gabriele Cimato • Feb 25 '19 • Edited

I'll try to give you an answer. First thing is to get your hands dirty, build something even if it's just a replica of a famous web app. Work on fundamentals, this means that your JavaScript knowledge should be as strong as possible.

Build a small app and a small API to support it. It's the best way to learn and get familiar with common problems.

Most of all don't be intimidated by the fact they they require ton of experience. Apply anyway if you have a solid understanding of a tech stack! If they ask for 3 years of experience in JavaScript and you only have 1.. Apply apply apply! I interview people frequently and job postings are mostly recommendations, if you can prove that you're capable a company might hire you anyway...I would!

Fabio Ricardo Charry • Feb 25 '19

Thank you, Gabriele, for your reply, I appreciate it.

Gabriele Cimato • Feb 25 '19

Absolutely! If you have more questions don't hesitate!

Al Romano • Feb 25 '19

One thing I would like to add for "Not Learning Responsive Design" is understanding the difference between Adaptaive Design, Responsive design and hybrid approaches and the pros/cons of each method. I can't count the number of times people have said their design is "responsive" but they developed adaptive, device specific designs calling it "responsive".

Peter Sylwester • Feb 25 '19

All good points. I might add that it is very unlikely for a junior developer to be given the chance to “start from scratch,” so they will likely need to adapt to many decisions that have already been made—including jQuery, frameworks, or whatever. This means being good at learning, and knowing how to learn fast! What to google? Who to trust? Are there groups or networks to get involved in? Often, teaching others is the best way to learn yourself, so learning networks go both ways. These are important things to appreciate too.

But I am SO glad to hear younger developers advocate for the basics. It can not be emphasized enough how important this is. An understanding of basics is never a waste of time, but rather a huge time savings that pays-off again and again. Even while learning a framework, take the time to try the same thing without.

Drawcard • Feb 26 '19 • Edited

Bootstrap, jQuery and other frameworks aren't necessarily bad things - in fact it was through using jQuery for years that I ended up getting deeper into Javascript, eventually learning how to write vanilla code to create slideshows, animations etc. and supplanting the need for jQuery.

jQuery is still used in reputable systems like WordPress, and you can compile your own version to strip out all the functions you don't need, so it's less heavy (as you can with Bootstrap).

The thing that does suck about Bootstrap is you get locked into a mentality of adding tons of classes to divs, expecting a certain result to happen. You often end up with a rabbit warren of nested divs & spans, loaded with heaps of non semantic class names, that make it a headache to debug and maintain. (Atomic frameworks are even worse...) And never substitute Sass for learning and writing good quality CSS - Sass is great and all but if you can't compile, you can't publish.

Besides all that, I view these frameworks and tools as starting points for new devs to get their head around core concepts, and then push forward into deeper understanding when the time is right.

R. Darwin Garcia • Feb 25 '19

Thank you for sharing Emma! Much appreciated. Do agree with a comment to balance out the beginning Journey with building things. It helps to keep the learning process more engaging by seeing the rewards of a product.

Lutece McDuck • Feb 26 '19

Hi, great post!
I am actually following a course with the Wild code school (French school).
I realize we are making some mistakes you list, But we are learning everything about JS and React in only 5 months.

Unfortunately, it's hard to avoid a few mistakes in that time.

I will improve my learning all along my career I assume.

Thank you for your advise.