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Back in October, I started my first big kid job as a Front End Web Developer. When I first started as an intern in August, I had a very limited idea of what Front End Web Development was all about. Nowadays, I spend most of my time reading and writing, or reading about CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Front End Development is about more than just code. If you ask the Internet what Front End Development is, there is a broad range of answers, and if you ask the Internet how to become a Front End Web Developer, there is an even broader range of answers. My purpose with this blog post is to help people, like my mother, understand what my job is. People who take interest in web development either because they know and love someone who is into it, or because they themselves are interested in becoming a Front End Web Developer.

Web Development, like many jobs, can be a complex topic. There’s a lot of evolution in the area of the web. Browsers are constantly improving and changing, screen sizes are changing with the evolution of smart phones, and the capabilities of the web are expanding. With this expansion comes new technologies and techniques for web development. Now, Front End Web Developers are responsible for writing code that adapts depending on which device and what browser a website is viewed from.

At its bare minimum, Front End Web Development is combining three coding languages to create an application the users can interact with. The developer can write this code based off of designs created by a web designer. However, a lot of the time it’s not that simple. There’s a lot more than visual design that goes into a website; interactions that the designer can’t always plan for. Often times at BURKE, the Front End Web Developer is handed a project and becomes responsible for more than just coding. To create the best experience possible for the users, the designs get more in depth than the visual design. Consideration of the design of user interactions is important because the Graphic Designer doesn’t always understand the coding process, and it can be difficult for them to design these interactions. Designers are not always aware of what is possible and what is not possible, so the interactions may be left to the developer. For this reason, it is favorable for the Front End Web Developer to have a background in design.

Being able to design some of these interactions is the fun part of the job. There’s a lot of opportunity to create mobile menu designs, design the way things behave on a webpage, for example hover animations. What the menu does when the screen size is a mobile screen, and figuring out how to make it do that. What part of the code needs to take care of that? Is it purely CSS, or would it make more sense to include a little splash of JavaScript? The developer must consider the user and how they experience the web page. In addition to that, they must also have an understanding of coding languages and how they work together, and how they change over the years to create something usable and pleasant to interact with.

At BURKE, it’s my job to make sure the webpages we create look exactly like our clients expect based on the designs they have approved, as well as ensure that users interacting with a website have a pleasant experience. Web Development is not only technical, but also a creative process. With no set rules for how to write a website, front-end development is not regulated. Users can’t tell the different between messy code and well-organized code. As long as it looks nice on the surface, the code makes no difference to those viewing webpages.

With the changing trends of design and development, it’s important to stay up to date. Web Developers have a responsibility to create something with quality, stay savvy with the industry, and stay educated about best practices in development. Keeping up with this responsibility is my goal as a Web Developer. Not only at the beginning of my career, but all throughout it.