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Learning Web Development? Skills to Make You Stand Out

192 points by cmorgan8506 8y ago

CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
While I don't dispute that this article lists good knowledge to have, I don't think it qualifies as useful career advice (which seems to be the intention). Want to stand out in web development? Specialize in something useful that few other people are. The best way to do that is to learn some technology that all your peers hate. "Pfft Java? Nobody uses Java anymore, you should learn Vue.js instead it's the new hotness" + "Companies are still hiring Java programmers" -> Learn Java, the herd is going away from it but the demand is still there.
- cryptozeus 8y ago
  "You should learn vue.ja instead of java" ? Makes no sense...one is frontend, another is sever side. More like you should learn both.
  - CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
    They were chosen at random from two distinct buckets: - Stuff that HN loves because it's new and exciting - Stuff that companies generally hire for Don't read too much into it.
  - monkeynotes 8y ago
    As a 'web developer' you can pick your area of expertise. Nothing says that as a front end developer I can't learn Java and become full stack or backend. People can pivot within the world of web development. If I find I am not standing out as a Python developer I could very well decide to learn either Vue or Java to stand out. Either language is still within the world of web development and would key in with existing skills and knowledge. What wouldn't make sense would be apprenticing in carpentry, that's not going to help you stand out as a web developer.
- ch4s3 8y ago
  I agree that picking a skill the market needs is sound advice, but I have a minor quibble here. I think self taught devs shouldn't focus on Java as an on-ramp into the job market, because it places them in direct competition with recent CS grads who learned Java in school, and with low cost offshore shops. I doubt you want to be in the low end (skill wise) of that market. Now, being well versed in Scala, Angular, or various flavors of SQL would be a solid way to differentiate while still targeting industry needs, IMO.
  - brightball 8y ago
    That is a worthwhile insight IMO.
    - ch4s3 8y ago
      Maybe, it was a bit off the cuff, and I'd need to think more about it and look at some actually employment and pay data to have a better sense of the validity of the claim. However, I think in general looking for a exploitable niche is a solid plan.
      - brightball 8y ago
        I'd support the notion entirely though. There are so many Enterprise Java jobs that have the 5 years of experience qualifier that it's a significant impediment for a self-taught. I ended up seeing both sides of this - I taught myself PHP and MySQL for a project I worked on for 3 years of college in my spare time...while I was learning Java and going through the CS program. When I came out, oddly enough I ended up getting a PHP job despite spending a lot of time "wanting" a Java job. Definitely got to experience both sides of that coin.
        ch4s3 8y ago
        I had a similar experience with Ruby.
  - Larrikin 8y ago
    I prefer Kotlin and scala over Java and feel they'll eventually overtake most use cases for Java. But there's just so much more information out there for learning Java. If you know Java, it's just much easier to pick up all the other JVM languages. You can be productive but not idiomatic in Kotlin in a couple weeks. I continue to recommend to friends to learn java first, despite never using it when I have a choice.
- camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
  What's with the anti-java circlejerk? I feel like most of those trash talking don't know how to use java. It's a totally legit tool for a number of back end jobs.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  Don't forget about the swaths of experienced Old Technology(TM) people already in the market. Nobody wants to learn PHP for the first time, but anyone with more than 10 years of webdev experience probably already knows it. Realistically, if you're just starting out, learning the New Hotness is probably not a bad idea as it puts you on more of a level playing field.
  - CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
    If you have time, learn the new hotness while you're employed for Boring Legacy Languages/Frameworks.
ryannevius 8y ago
Shouldn't most of these be standard skills that a web developer should know? I think _not_ knowing these things would make you stand out more than if you knew them (albeit, negatively). Perhaps I'm missing something...
- cmorgan8506 8y ago
  I think you'd be surprised what is left out when people come from unconventional backgrounds.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- darkstar999 8y ago
  Not necessarily. For example you could be a decent web developer on the Microsoft stack and not be proficient with the whole section "Learn To Work in Unix Shells". Also it could be easy to get by using git with a UI and not know any of the commands or medium/advanced functionality.
  - camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
    To be fair if you truly understand how to use git with a UI you can probably pick up the console within an hour or two of some cursory googling.
- titanix2 8y ago
  Yes, I also think these are standard skills; I have most skills listed here and I'm not even a web developer.
- walshemj 8y ago
  I have worked with web developers and developers who didn't have the knowledge of how to use the command line or much if any networking.
majewsky 8y ago
One of these skills is apparently "making a website that's completely blank on my phone" (FF for Android with uBlock Origin).
eranation 8y ago
Adding to this: learn soft skills: - check yourself before blaming others, it might eventually be an issue in your code - beware of premature optimization. Spend that time on defensive code, comments and tests. Optimize based on measurements, not feelings - take notes when getting tasks and make sure you don’t miss anything - ask questions when stuck but don’t ask things before at least googling them once - under promise and over deliver - be nice and never argumentative - be humble when getting criticism and be merciful when giving one - count to ten before sending an angry / escalation email - understand that some people need to have things explained to them slowly and more than once, be patient - have some backbone eg, if your manager is wrong, tell them (in private!) but accept if they don’t agree, they have the final word. - be proactive and communacte your status and plans even if not asked to - don’t work yourself to death, have limits
- fiveoak 8y ago
  The importance of soft skills is underrated. Technical skills are important, sure, but I would much rather work with an "average", friendly teammate than an insufferable genius.
  - monkeynotes 8y ago
    ^this this this! Hard skills can be learned, good soft skills are more difficult to incubate. All the best companies I've worked for have had a bias toward hiring people who will easily fit in. People with small egos, people who want to help, people who show up.
  - kahnpro 8y ago
    And the insufferable genius often produces shit code anyway since he has no concept of how to work together with other humans / write code for teams.
- digitalsushi 8y ago
  someone on my team said this to me and i fell in love with the phase. "If you explain slowly I will learn quickly"
digitalsushi 8y ago
Are there any modern tricks for debugging against a TLS website? Last time I was doing it 5 years ago we did mitm proxies, ssl self-signed tricks, to get wireshark able to sniff and read the payload. Did anyone invent an easy way to do this?
- JBReefer 8y ago
  What are you reading that you can't read in the dev tools? You can see, edit, resend, and copy requests as CURL commands in both Firefox and Chrome. You can also see timing, some encryption stuff, and it's all in plaintext because it hasn't gone over the wire yet.
  - NegativeLatency 8y ago
    Safari has the ability to copy as curl now too.
  - digitalsushi 8y ago
    Ah, I remember. I had the model wrong. I was trying to view the HTTP payload of a remote client connecting to a remote server. We were trying to debug what was happening when clients were connecting to some enterprise appliances we didnt have the keys for. It has nothing to do with web development, but I mis-remembered what it was I used to work on. Ooops!
- bendecoste 8y ago
  charles proxy is not bad .. still have to do some self-signed stuff but it is fairly automated
onion2k 8y ago
I asked Web Developers across several communities what skills they thought were often neglected by new Web Developers Knowing git would be great, knowing HTTP would help if you're going to be working with APIs, and knowing dev tools would be useful if you're more front-end. I'm not sure the rest (networking, UNIX, another language and commenting code) are really things that would tip the balance in your favour. Particularly the additional language - I'm sure most web software companies would rather a candidate knew more about the main languages used to build web things (HTML, CSS, JS, [Node|Ruby|PHP], and SQL) than something 'extra' that they're unlikely to use if only one dev knows it.
- bartmcpherson 8y ago
  Simple networking knowledge is a go-to interview question for me. If you don't understand the basics of what happens from the time you enter a request in the browser to when the page fully renders you won't be very good at troubleshooting some basic issues. (Can't reach the server. Some content is missing. Is it timing out. How many requests are generated by a page.)
- tonyarkles 8y ago
  > I'm not sure the rest (networking, UNIX, another language and commenting code) are really things that would tip the balance in your favour. As someone who sits more on the Ops side of DevOps in his current day job, developers who can say "df said the disk is full", "when I try to connect to it, it times out while connecting and we don't even get a syn/ack back, but it works fine from my phone", etc... I want to hug them. Additionally, I came across this comment the other day while debugging a firewall issue: // FIXME, we probably want to make this more robust since if it fails on startup it will never be good until we restart. I was pretty upset to discover that the things I had been trying were all pointless, since I wasn't restarting the server every time, but that single line comment was the enlightenment I needed to solve the problem. > Particularly the additional language - I'm sure most web software companies would rather a candidate knew more about the main languages used to build web things (HTML, CSS, JS, [Node|Ruby|PHP], and SQL) than something 'extra' that they're unlikely to use if only one dev knows it. I think knowing things outside of just the web languages is the difference between someone who has pigeonholed themselves as a "web developer" vs. the more general "developer". Going for questionable analogies, I'd way rather have a "mechanic" than a "car mechanic" ("Oh? That's a 1/4 ton truck? Sorry, I only work on cars")
cryptozeus 8y ago
I am a full stack dev in Microsoft world, been working with .net for 10+ year. Just started to gather skills to disconnect from ms and move my career fw as a front end dev. Thanks for putting together this list, it terrifies me !
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
rdiddly 8y ago
It's a good list, though these particular things are more about functioning at a basic level than standing out. Speaking more generally, the best reason to learn anything is always "so you can do shit" rather than some calculated competitive motivation to impress someone. The latter attitude reminds me of the 80s somehow, and yes I'm old enough to remember. It doesn't bring joy. Neither does being told there might be thousands (bold type and everything) of people competing with you. Just focus on mastery, have fun, and let "standing out" happen on its own.
- noxToken 8y ago
  If bootcamps trend upwards to overtake traditional 4 year curricula, then this list will absolutely make them stand out. Those courses are hyper-focused on essential OJT basics that they wouldn't have time to incorporate a lot of this information.
- camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
  No kidding. I was blown away by the notion there are working web devs who don't understand HTTP or basic networking. I feel like this advice could be summed up in one sentence, "Create at least two good full stack web applications for your portfolio, put them in your git, use different languages for each and a minimal IDE." The best advice to stand out has already been said here, soft skills that complement fundamental technical competence. Once you're in an interview understanding basic human empathy and having a strong and apparent capacity to work with a team has way more persuasion than bullet points on your resume.
- Meegul 8y ago
  I got the same impression. I'm still a student and have a decent grasp of all of these things from my prior internships. I thought that some of these skills were not standout, but rather mandatory in order to work full time as a web developer. I guess I have nothing to worry about.
at-fates-hands 8y ago
In most cases, you really don't need to know most of these. Depending on where you're working, most places have s dedicated team for networking, they have a whole teams dedicated to working on Linux servers, they have whole teams who only do database stuff. For me, these are more "nice to have" skills than anything that will make you stand out. You should know how HTTP works, you should know how to use GIT. If you doing any modern web development, you should already completely familiar with the command line. Most of the time when you talk with recruiters or hiring managers, they're looking for more of a "culture fit" which translate to developers with soft skills and a decent personality. A company can always mold a developer to how they do things and the tools they use, but it's a lot harder to change a shitty personality.
- Myrmornis 8y ago
  I agree the article is a bit of a laundry list but job search success is not about culture fit; technical screens and technical interviews are ubiquitous and critical.
- riffic 8y ago
  >In most cases, you really don't need to know most of these. Do realize, the days of throwing your code over the wall and letting those teams deal with the underlying pieces are over
sailfast 8y ago
These are all good skills to be proficient on day one. What I don't see listed that I would prioritize above some of these (because every environment is different so skills are sometimes different) is testing discipline. Have you written a unit test before? Can you write testable code? That is a much harder set of concepts to understand and would likely take awhile. Make sure what you put up is tested - that would separate you quite a bit.
crunchlibrarian 8y ago
Really? I haven't done web dev in many years but these were all skills I had mastered before even attempting to define what type of development I wanted to do. If web developers don't already all know this then what knowledge do they have nowadays? Just intimate trivia details of whatever framework/platform is hip this month? Is that all they work on?
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  Ya... I don't get this article. I think the skills are good, but they aren't going to make you stand out. If you don't know DNS, how did you get a website in the first place to start working on. If you know how to code, you probably know how to get your changes onto the website with GIT. And if you have made a website before you probably know how to use Chrome Dev or Firebug. All this stuff except the HTTP, and Network Debugging would be covered in the first two weeks of any coding bootcamp.
- chamilto 8y ago
  > If web developers don't already all know this then what knowledge do they have nowadays? Read the article's title. This article is clearly aimed at people who are starting to learn web development. It is not aimed at experienced web developers. > ...these were all skills I had mastered before even attempting to define what type of development I wanted to do Many people learn how to program by working on projects they want to work on, and a lot of people want to build web applications.
epx 8y ago
My situation is opposite: I know many things but React/Vue/Angular. It is interesting how the remote job market turned away fast from mobile development. I have elected to learn React and Vue, hoping to bet on the right horses :)
- ausjke 8y ago
  what do you mean by "the remote job market turned away fast from mobile development"?
  - epx 8y ago
    When I look at remote jobs, almost everything is React/Angular, and my expertise is currently more at mobile.
    - ausjke 8y ago
      by mobile you mean 'native apps'?
      - epx 8y ago
        Yes, sorry by not being clearer from the beginning. I guess the bulk of the 'app' market will move towards PWA, which is a good thing.
- loso 8y ago
  I was just starting to look for remote work and I was thinking about marketing my mobile (Android) skills to look for jobs. But I have been a web developer for the past 5 years (And 10 years before my switch to mobile for a few years). So you're saying its better to market my web skills rather than mobile?
  - epx 8y ago
    From my desk, that's exactly how it looks. It may be the case that remote jobs are a biased sample.
aditya5670 8y ago
https://www.welookups.com/android/Android_ImageView.html https://www.welookups.com/android/Android_ImageView.html new web tutorial
ovrdrv3 8y ago
> Get familiar with a command line text editor (vim, Emacs, nano, …). Can someone explain to me why it would be beneficial to learn these? Most of the time if you needed to edit some file couldn't you just <fav text editor here> file.*? I am trying to understand this. Thanks
- albemuth 8y ago
  It's useful when working with remote servers that may not have a graphical interface at all. There's rsync and network drives are sometimes an option but it's very convenient to just ssh into a server and edit/view with vim directly. In the cases of vim/emacs, people who dive deep enough will often find them superior than <previous fav text editor>.
  - _mrmnmly 8y ago
    100% this
  - ovrdrv3 8y ago
    Thank you for your reply! > In the cases of vim/emacs, people who dive deep enough will often find them superior than <previous fav text editor>. Yeah after reading so many vim vs. emacs memes I was really surprised when my git commit message opened one of them for the first time. ( I didn't surround the message in quotes or something.)
- mattlondon 8y ago
  Its handy to be able to make changes on remote servers there and then without too much messing about. E.g if you are connected to a remote server and you need to change a file, how do you do it with say VSCode or Sublime etc? Download it to your machine, edit it, save it, then re-upload? Sure that works for the occasional once-a-month kinda thing, but it is a bit convoluted. It is much easier and faster to just edit the file there and then on the server. Especially if you are doing multiple changes. Vi really is very simple - you just need to remember esc, i, x and :wq and that is basically all you need to know to be able to do basic edits a file on pretty much ANY server you'll ever connect to (except perhaps windows or a super-stripped down cloud image).
svdr 8y ago
Learn a little about AppSec: https://www.owasp.org/images/7/72/OWASP_Top_10-2017_%28en%29.pdf.pdf https://www.owasp.org/images/7/72/OWASP_Top_10-2017_%28en%29...
scarface74 8y ago
Remember, it’s not about learning a language that will get you a job. It’s about broadening your horizons as a developer and being able to recognize the right tool for the job. It's almodt always about getting a job. Why not concentrate on a language that makes you immediately employable?
- BigChiefSmokem 8y ago
  I think the point is to do both. By broadening your horizons you will most definitely pick up other languages and techniques along the way.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I understand. But if you are just starting out, why not use the most in demand languages first prioritizing by what's easiest to pick up? I would think for instance for the middle tier - Python, Java, C#, Node JS Python seems to be the easiest - I just learned it two weeks ago. Then Java or C# and finally Node. I would think Node would be the hardest to learn because of how it is structured.
poulsbohemian 8y ago
FWIW: cmorgan8506, the OP, is a quality freelance developer. Would hire again.
mythrwy 8y ago
These skills seem pretty basic for a web developer to have for most part (git, know about HTTP verbs, be able to use browser debug tools). Are there many web developers who don't know about these things?

192 points by cmorgan8506 8y ago

While I don't dispute that this article lists good knowledge to have, I don't think it qualifies as useful career advice (which seems to be the intention). Want to stand out in web development? Specialize in something useful that few other people are. The best way to do that is to learn some technology that all your peers hate. "Pfft Java? Nobody uses Java anymore, you should learn Vue.js instead it's the new hotness" + "Companies are still hiring Java programmers" -> Learn Java, the herd is going away from it but the demand is still there.

cryptozeus 8y ago
"You should learn vue.ja instead of java" ? Makes no sense...one is frontend, another is sever side. More like you should learn both.
- CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
  They were chosen at random from two distinct buckets: - Stuff that HN loves because it's new and exciting - Stuff that companies generally hire for Don't read too much into it.
- monkeynotes 8y ago
  As a 'web developer' you can pick your area of expertise. Nothing says that as a front end developer I can't learn Java and become full stack or backend. People can pivot within the world of web development. If I find I am not standing out as a Python developer I could very well decide to learn either Vue or Java to stand out. Either language is still within the world of web development and would key in with existing skills and knowledge. What wouldn't make sense would be apprenticing in carpentry, that's not going to help you stand out as a web developer.
ch4s3 8y ago
I agree that picking a skill the market needs is sound advice, but I have a minor quibble here. I think self taught devs shouldn't focus on Java as an on-ramp into the job market, because it places them in direct competition with recent CS grads who learned Java in school, and with low cost offshore shops. I doubt you want to be in the low end (skill wise) of that market. Now, being well versed in Scala, Angular, or various flavors of SQL would be a solid way to differentiate while still targeting industry needs, IMO.
- brightball 8y ago
  That is a worthwhile insight IMO.
  - ch4s3 8y ago
    Maybe, it was a bit off the cuff, and I'd need to think more about it and look at some actually employment and pay data to have a better sense of the validity of the claim. However, I think in general looking for a exploitable niche is a solid plan.
    - brightball 8y ago
      I'd support the notion entirely though. There are so many Enterprise Java jobs that have the 5 years of experience qualifier that it's a significant impediment for a self-taught. I ended up seeing both sides of this - I taught myself PHP and MySQL for a project I worked on for 3 years of college in my spare time...while I was learning Java and going through the CS program. When I came out, oddly enough I ended up getting a PHP job despite spending a lot of time "wanting" a Java job. Definitely got to experience both sides of that coin.
      - ch4s3 8y ago
        I had a similar experience with Ruby.
- Larrikin 8y ago
  I prefer Kotlin and scala over Java and feel they'll eventually overtake most use cases for Java. But there's just so much more information out there for learning Java. If you know Java, it's just much easier to pick up all the other JVM languages. You can be productive but not idiomatic in Kotlin in a couple weeks. I continue to recommend to friends to learn java first, despite never using it when I have a choice.
camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
What's with the anti-java circlejerk? I feel like most of those trash talking don't know how to use java. It's a totally legit tool for a number of back end jobs.
mywittyname 8y ago
Don't forget about the swaths of experienced Old Technology(TM) people already in the market. Nobody wants to learn PHP for the first time, but anyone with more than 10 years of webdev experience probably already knows it. Realistically, if you're just starting out, learning the New Hotness is probably not a bad idea as it puts you on more of a level playing field.
- CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
  If you have time, learn the new hotness while you're employed for Boring Legacy Languages/Frameworks.

ryannevius 8y ago

Shouldn't most of these be standard skills that a web developer should know? I think _not_ knowing these things would make you stand out more than if you knew them (albeit, negatively). Perhaps I'm missing something...

cmorgan8506 8y ago
I think you'd be surprised what is left out when people come from unconventional backgrounds.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
darkstar999 8y ago
Not necessarily. For example you could be a decent web developer on the Microsoft stack and not be proficient with the whole section "Learn To Work in Unix Shells". Also it could be easy to get by using git with a UI and not know any of the commands or medium/advanced functionality.
- camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
  To be fair if you truly understand how to use git with a UI you can probably pick up the console within an hour or two of some cursory googling.
titanix2 8y ago
Yes, I also think these are standard skills; I have most skills listed here and I'm not even a web developer.
walshemj 8y ago
I have worked with web developers and developers who didn't have the knowledge of how to use the command line or much if any networking.

majewsky 8y ago

One of these skills is apparently "making a website that's completely blank on my phone" (FF for Android with uBlock Origin).

eranation 8y ago

Adding to this: learn soft skills: - check yourself before blaming others, it might eventually be an issue in your code - beware of premature optimization. Spend that time on defensive code, comments and tests. Optimize based on measurements, not feelings - take notes when getting tasks and make sure you don’t miss anything - ask questions when stuck but don’t ask things before at least googling them once - under promise and over deliver - be nice and never argumentative - be humble when getting criticism and be merciful when giving one - count to ten before sending an angry / escalation email - understand that some people need to have things explained to them slowly and more than once, be patient - have some backbone eg, if your manager is wrong, tell them (in private!) but accept if they don’t agree, they have the final word. - be proactive and communacte your status and plans even if not asked to - don’t work yourself to death, have limits

fiveoak 8y ago
The importance of soft skills is underrated. Technical skills are important, sure, but I would much rather work with an "average", friendly teammate than an insufferable genius.
- monkeynotes 8y ago
  ^this this this! Hard skills can be learned, good soft skills are more difficult to incubate. All the best companies I've worked for have had a bias toward hiring people who will easily fit in. People with small egos, people who want to help, people who show up.
- kahnpro 8y ago
  And the insufferable genius often produces shit code anyway since he has no concept of how to work together with other humans / write code for teams.
digitalsushi 8y ago
someone on my team said this to me and i fell in love with the phase. "If you explain slowly I will learn quickly"

digitalsushi 8y ago

Are there any modern tricks for debugging against a TLS website? Last time I was doing it 5 years ago we did mitm proxies, ssl self-signed tricks, to get wireshark able to sniff and read the payload. Did anyone invent an easy way to do this?

JBReefer 8y ago
What are you reading that you can't read in the dev tools? You can see, edit, resend, and copy requests as CURL commands in both Firefox and Chrome. You can also see timing, some encryption stuff, and it's all in plaintext because it hasn't gone over the wire yet.
- NegativeLatency 8y ago
  Safari has the ability to copy as curl now too.
- digitalsushi 8y ago
  Ah, I remember. I had the model wrong. I was trying to view the HTTP payload of a remote client connecting to a remote server. We were trying to debug what was happening when clients were connecting to some enterprise appliances we didnt have the keys for. It has nothing to do with web development, but I mis-remembered what it was I used to work on. Ooops!
bendecoste 8y ago
charles proxy is not bad .. still have to do some self-signed stuff but it is fairly automated

onion2k 8y ago

I asked Web Developers across several communities what skills they thought were often neglected by new Web Developers Knowing git would be great, knowing HTTP would help if you're going to be working with APIs, and knowing dev tools would be useful if you're more front-end. I'm not sure the rest (networking, UNIX, another language and commenting code) are really things that would tip the balance in your favour. Particularly the additional language - I'm sure most web software companies would rather a candidate knew more about the main languages used to build web things (HTML, CSS, JS, [Node|Ruby|PHP], and SQL) than something 'extra' that they're unlikely to use if only one dev knows it.

bartmcpherson 8y ago
Simple networking knowledge is a go-to interview question for me. If you don't understand the basics of what happens from the time you enter a request in the browser to when the page fully renders you won't be very good at troubleshooting some basic issues. (Can't reach the server. Some content is missing. Is it timing out. How many requests are generated by a page.)
tonyarkles 8y ago
> I'm not sure the rest (networking, UNIX, another language and commenting code) are really things that would tip the balance in your favour. As someone who sits more on the Ops side of DevOps in his current day job, developers who can say "df said the disk is full", "when I try to connect to it, it times out while connecting and we don't even get a syn/ack back, but it works fine from my phone", etc... I want to hug them. Additionally, I came across this comment the other day while debugging a firewall issue: // FIXME, we probably want to make this more robust since if it fails on startup it will never be good until we restart. I was pretty upset to discover that the things I had been trying were all pointless, since I wasn't restarting the server every time, but that single line comment was the enlightenment I needed to solve the problem. > Particularly the additional language - I'm sure most web software companies would rather a candidate knew more about the main languages used to build web things (HTML, CSS, JS, [Node|Ruby|PHP], and SQL) than something 'extra' that they're unlikely to use if only one dev knows it. I think knowing things outside of just the web languages is the difference between someone who has pigeonholed themselves as a "web developer" vs. the more general "developer". Going for questionable analogies, I'd way rather have a "mechanic" than a "car mechanic" ("Oh? That's a 1/4 ton truck? Sorry, I only work on cars")

cryptozeus 8y ago

I am a full stack dev in Microsoft world, been working with .net for 10+ year. Just started to gather skills to disconnect from ms and move my career fw as a front end dev. Thanks for putting together this list, it terrifies me !

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

rdiddly 8y ago

It's a good list, though these particular things are more about functioning at a basic level than standing out. Speaking more generally, the best reason to learn anything is always "so you can do shit" rather than some calculated competitive motivation to impress someone. The latter attitude reminds me of the 80s somehow, and yes I'm old enough to remember. It doesn't bring joy. Neither does being told there might be thousands (bold type and everything) of people competing with you. Just focus on mastery, have fun, and let "standing out" happen on its own.

noxToken 8y ago
If bootcamps trend upwards to overtake traditional 4 year curricula, then this list will absolutely make them stand out. Those courses are hyper-focused on essential OJT basics that they wouldn't have time to incorporate a lot of this information.
camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
No kidding. I was blown away by the notion there are working web devs who don't understand HTTP or basic networking. I feel like this advice could be summed up in one sentence, "Create at least two good full stack web applications for your portfolio, put them in your git, use different languages for each and a minimal IDE." The best advice to stand out has already been said here, soft skills that complement fundamental technical competence. Once you're in an interview understanding basic human empathy and having a strong and apparent capacity to work with a team has way more persuasion than bullet points on your resume.
Meegul 8y ago
I got the same impression. I'm still a student and have a decent grasp of all of these things from my prior internships. I thought that some of these skills were not standout, but rather mandatory in order to work full time as a web developer. I guess I have nothing to worry about.

at-fates-hands 8y ago

In most cases, you really don't need to know most of these. Depending on where you're working, most places have s dedicated team for networking, they have a whole teams dedicated to working on Linux servers, they have whole teams who only do database stuff. For me, these are more "nice to have" skills than anything that will make you stand out. You should know how HTTP works, you should know how to use GIT. If you doing any modern web development, you should already completely familiar with the command line. Most of the time when you talk with recruiters or hiring managers, they're looking for more of a "culture fit" which translate to developers with soft skills and a decent personality. A company can always mold a developer to how they do things and the tools they use, but it's a lot harder to change a shitty personality.

Myrmornis 8y ago
I agree the article is a bit of a laundry list but job search success is not about culture fit; technical screens and technical interviews are ubiquitous and critical.
riffic 8y ago
>In most cases, you really don't need to know most of these. Do realize, the days of throwing your code over the wall and letting those teams deal with the underlying pieces are over

sailfast 8y ago

These are all good skills to be proficient on day one. What I don't see listed that I would prioritize above some of these (because every environment is different so skills are sometimes different) is testing discipline. Have you written a unit test before? Can you write testable code? That is a much harder set of concepts to understand and would likely take awhile. Make sure what you put up is tested - that would separate you quite a bit.

crunchlibrarian 8y ago

Really? I haven't done web dev in many years but these were all skills I had mastered before even attempting to define what type of development I wanted to do. If web developers don't already all know this then what knowledge do they have nowadays? Just intimate trivia details of whatever framework/platform is hip this month? Is that all they work on?

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
Ya... I don't get this article. I think the skills are good, but they aren't going to make you stand out. If you don't know DNS, how did you get a website in the first place to start working on. If you know how to code, you probably know how to get your changes onto the website with GIT. And if you have made a website before you probably know how to use Chrome Dev or Firebug. All this stuff except the HTTP, and Network Debugging would be covered in the first two weeks of any coding bootcamp.
chamilto 8y ago
> If web developers don't already all know this then what knowledge do they have nowadays? Read the article's title. This article is clearly aimed at people who are starting to learn web development. It is not aimed at experienced web developers. > ...these were all skills I had mastered before even attempting to define what type of development I wanted to do Many people learn how to program by working on projects they want to work on, and a lot of people want to build web applications.

epx 8y ago

My situation is opposite: I know many things but React/Vue/Angular. It is interesting how the remote job market turned away fast from mobile development. I have elected to learn React and Vue, hoping to bet on the right horses :)

ausjke 8y ago
what do you mean by "the remote job market turned away fast from mobile development"?
- epx 8y ago
  When I look at remote jobs, almost everything is React/Angular, and my expertise is currently more at mobile.
  - ausjke 8y ago
    by mobile you mean 'native apps'?
    - epx 8y ago
      Yes, sorry by not being clearer from the beginning. I guess the bulk of the 'app' market will move towards PWA, which is a good thing.
loso 8y ago
I was just starting to look for remote work and I was thinking about marketing my mobile (Android) skills to look for jobs. But I have been a web developer for the past 5 years (And 10 years before my switch to mobile for a few years). So you're saying its better to market my web skills rather than mobile?
- epx 8y ago
  From my desk, that's exactly how it looks. It may be the case that remote jobs are a biased sample.

aditya5670 8y ago

https://www.welookups.com/android/Android_ImageView.html https://www.welookups.com/android/Android_ImageView.html new web tutorial

ovrdrv3 8y ago

> Get familiar with a command line text editor (vim, Emacs, nano, …). Can someone explain to me why it would be beneficial to learn these? Most of the time if you needed to edit some file couldn't you just <fav text editor here> file.*? I am trying to understand this. Thanks

albemuth 8y ago
It's useful when working with remote servers that may not have a graphical interface at all. There's rsync and network drives are sometimes an option but it's very convenient to just ssh into a server and edit/view with vim directly. In the cases of vim/emacs, people who dive deep enough will often find them superior than <previous fav text editor>.
- _mrmnmly 8y ago
  100% this
- ovrdrv3 8y ago
  Thank you for your reply! > In the cases of vim/emacs, people who dive deep enough will often find them superior than <previous fav text editor>. Yeah after reading so many vim vs. emacs memes I was really surprised when my git commit message opened one of them for the first time. ( I didn't surround the message in quotes or something.)
mattlondon 8y ago
Its handy to be able to make changes on remote servers there and then without too much messing about. E.g if you are connected to a remote server and you need to change a file, how do you do it with say VSCode or Sublime etc? Download it to your machine, edit it, save it, then re-upload? Sure that works for the occasional once-a-month kinda thing, but it is a bit convoluted. It is much easier and faster to just edit the file there and then on the server. Especially if you are doing multiple changes. Vi really is very simple - you just need to remember esc, i, x and :wq and that is basically all you need to know to be able to do basic edits a file on pretty much ANY server you'll ever connect to (except perhaps windows or a super-stripped down cloud image).

svdr 8y ago

Learn a little about AppSec: https://www.owasp.org/images/7/72/OWASP_Top_10-2017_%28en%29.pdf.pdf https://www.owasp.org/images/7/72/OWASP_Top_10-2017_%28en%29...

scarface74 8y ago

Remember, it’s not about learning a language that will get you a job. It’s about broadening your horizons as a developer and being able to recognize the right tool for the job. It's almodt always about getting a job. Why not concentrate on a language that makes you immediately employable?

BigChiefSmokem 8y ago
I think the point is to do both. By broadening your horizons you will most definitely pick up other languages and techniques along the way.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I understand. But if you are just starting out, why not use the most in demand languages first prioritizing by what's easiest to pick up? I would think for instance for the middle tier - Python, Java, C#, Node JS Python seems to be the easiest - I just learned it two weeks ago. Then Java or C# and finally Node. I would think Node would be the hardest to learn because of how it is structured.

poulsbohemian 8y ago

FWIW: cmorgan8506, the OP, is a quality freelance developer. Would hire again.

mythrwy 8y ago

These skills seem pretty basic for a web developer to have for most part (git, know about HTTP verbs, be able to use browser debug tools). Are there many web developers who don't know about these things?