One skill every web developer needs to know.

over the past few weeks there's been a lot of discussion on twitter about what technology every web developer needs to know in 2020. some tweets will say specific technologies like sql and react and others will counter those and say really you should focus on the fundamentals of javascript html and css now i think the reason these tweets are resonating is because our industry can be overwhelming and people just want to know what they're supposed to do next so i wanted to weigh in on this topic and pull from both my own experience as well as the developers that have been in the trainings and classes that i've taught so to start off i'm not going to bury the lead here the number one skill that every developer has to learn is how to learn our industry changes so fast and these listicle tweets are a testament to that because it seems like we need a new one every single year but the reality is that once you get good at learning new technology the specific tool or framework doesn't really matter that much because however you're building websites today is going to look totally different from how you do it three or four years from now so i think the first step in tackling all this is acknowledging that the only constant in our industry is change and therefore you must practice the ability to learn new things and get comfortable being outside of your comfort zone all that being said i do have some practical advice for you depending where you're at in your career now if you're just starting out don't worry so much about the particular tool or framework you learn you just need to worry about getting your reps in so that you can actually build side projects and demonstrate your capabilities to others that's going to help you actually figure out what it is you want to specialize in and again because tech changes so fast whatever you learned today is not going to be what you use a couple years down the road believe me i've known lots of developers who have had very successful careers and worked with tools that fall anywhere on the popularity spectrum so instead of being scared about choosing the wrong tool or framework just focus on what motivates you and what you're naturally interested in because that will help drive you to put the time needed in to actually finish some work and show it off to potential employers also don't let skill lists on job postings scare you because the best employers don't care about what you already know if an employer will only hire someone with three years of react experience they're probably not set up with the kind of support structure you want early on in your career with space and time for things like pairing with senior developers and learning new technologies so if you didn't make it through an interview because you didn't have a specific skill there's a good chance that you'll be better off somewhere else now as you move forward in your career and you get more experience trying out different parts of the stack and different technologies you're going to figure out more of what you actually like and what you want to do next and that should really be the thing that drives how you invest your learning time do you want to make websites or do you want to build mobile apps or do you want to write code that goes on a spacex shuttle that orbits the planet these are all very different career paths that demand very different skill sets and there's no one-size-fits-all tweet that's going to tell you what you should learn next even in web development which is my area of specialization there's so many different things that you could choose to focus on i got into web development through data visualization so when i was starting out i was spending a lot of time with d3js which is this javascript data visualization library just because i liked it and i got a job where i was able to use it and then i kind of fell in love with uh ui development with javascript and so i started investing more in the language itself as well as front end frameworks like ember and react so once you know more about the kind of work you want to do you can tailor your learning and invest in tools and technologies that will allow you to do that work and for those of you who have been in the industry for a while and maybe have this feeling that you're falling behind or you haven't kept up with the latest tech i just want to encourage you that we all experience that and that feeling never really goes away as a personal anecdote i haven't learned typescript yet but typescript is really important to the work i want to do both on the teaching side and on the open source development side so i need to dive into it soon i'm not necessarily looking forward to going through that learning curve again but i've done this before time and time again in the seven years i've been a developer so i know that even if i feel a little overwhelmed at first eventually i'll get it in fact precisely because i have avoided learning typescript for as long as i possibly can is probably the perfect indicator that it's the technology that i should learn next so just to close out you know this is a nuanced conversation and don't lose sleep over 280 characters if you prioritize learning how to learn and demonstrate your curiosity and your competence to others you won't have to worry about choosing the wrong tech when it comes to having a very healthy career there's a lot more to say about this topic but this is kind of a new style video for me so if you have more questions or want to hear more of my thoughts on this let me know in the comments otherwise if you celebrated thanksgiving i hope you had a great week and if not get your hands on some sweet potato casserole because that that's just the best dish ever and if you haven't tried it out you're missing out just do it for me all right y'all take it easy and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Sam Selikoff

Views: 2,567

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 0evkNDOqQE4

Length: 5min 38sec (338 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020