What is a front-end?

Hey, you opened this text, because you were wondering for a while what is the difference between front-end and markup development? Then you hit the address. Within the article, I will tell you about the problem of many programming courses, deception with front-end courses, yes, yes, I will be able to tell it, and in fact, some people will be disappointed.

Why am I doing this? This is often the primary question that you just have to be compelled to Why am I doing this? This is the first question that you have to ask yourself everything, everything has a meaning. But everything is simple, these guys deliver a lot of inconvenience.

First web studios, releasing just anyone, and I just work there.

Secondly, the entire industry of study. A particular firm will earn money only once, but then the student cannot find a job, his wealth does not grow, on the whole he ends up as a client and this is very bad for the entire training industry, even for those that do not IT, and I work there too.

When the majority of people open their eyes, more than 50% of the courses will go bankrupt, since all the naive ones will bring money at least once, and there will be nothing for them to pay a second time.

Now that you understand my interest, I hope we have some level of trust. Let’s go to the facts and figures, where I will try to explain why the numbers are just like that and what the front-end is after all.

A bit to get confused, but rather an example of a “scientific” explanation of the term front-end:

Front-end and back-end are terms in software engineering that differ according to the principle of the division of responsibility between the representative level and the level of data access, respectively. Front-end – the interface between the user and the main software and hardware (back-end). Front-end and back-end can be distributed between one or more systems.

In software architecture, there can be many layers between the hardware and the end user, each of which can also have a front-end and back-end. Front end is an abstraction that provides a user interface.

Wikipedia

These lines tell us that the front-end is the same as the layout, but nevertheless we have a layout designer, and there is a front-end vendor, and the salary difference is enormous.

In principle, it does not matter to us that according to the scientific “front-end”, it is important for us to understand why people pay a large salary,

Small sample for job requirements

Summary table of the most recent vacancies with work.ua in one table, vacancies up to a year of experience.

Skills Included for markup developer? Included for a front-end developer?

• WordPress and other CMS 1 1
• Design 1 0
• Photoshop 3 0
• Html/css 5 4
• JavaScript (jQuery) 3 4
• PURE JavaScript (Prototype and etc) 0 4
• Angular.js, React.js, Ember.js and so on 0 5
• Node.js 0 2
• Bootstrap 2 2
• SASS / LESS 0 2
• Git 0 2

On average, taking into account the viewed job offer, the salaries in USD are as follows:

• Markup developer – from $180;

• Front-end developer –  from $430.

Markup developer job offers

There is a special focus on basic skills like HTML, almost all require knowledge of WordPress or something, one of the vacancies was looking for a combined layout designer and designer (by the way, this is very cool and relevant, but for the designer’s job and not the programmer).

These vacancies are from small web studios that create mostly template sites on the CMS, often from ready-made templates, the same chimpanzee employees, the lowest paid employees in the field of web programming.

These guys once did the first web sites, but now the sites have become much more complex and functional, because their skills are very poorly rated.

But knowledge of PURE JavaScript from such candidates does not require (never even before), maximum jQuery or write something like “JS at the level of connect”, please pay attention to this.

Front-end developer job offers

In all vacancies, there are almost the same skills as for the layout designer, but look at how much all that has to do with JavaScript.

The front-end developer is doing very similar things with the mark-up developer, if it’s very rough, then when the JavaScript code in the layout is a couple of times more than HTML, it’s considered a front end, and if absolutely right, then:

• the layout designer simply makes up the layout, his main task is to have a 100% coincidence of the layout and layout that the designer sent.

• the front-end developer creates logic, he of course knows how to typeset, but his main task is to have all the scripts on the site work, all the buttons are pressed, all the functions are working that these buttons start up and much more, but all this is somehow connected with JavaScript.

Both of them are engaged in the browser part of the site, the wiki wrote correctly, but too generalized.

Job Skills for the front-end developer

Let’s analyze the list of skills higher than and confirm with that of them, for the leader, you’ll be thought-about as a front-end manager and not an engineer.

• PURE JavaScript, PURE means clean, this is not some special JS, it just means that you have to write simple things on JS without using libraries.

• Angular.js, React.js, Ember.js, these are three frameworks that most web studios use, it’s enough to know some of them. By the way, I want to pay attention, for Angular.js they are looking for exactly the first version of the framework, not the second. Why so, it will pull on the whole report, on the Internet there are many materials on this subject.

• SASS / LESS, Git and other gizmos, again, not met in the layout designer jobs.

By the way, WordPress and everything similar can become a disadvantage in an interview, adding up a false impression to the employer that you are a regular CMS developer, the level is only slightly higher than a typical markup developer.

So, the outline table of skills, to be thought-about a front-end for associate degree leader, you wish to know: 

1. The same as for markup developer

2. Awoke within the middle of the night, answer any easy questions on PURE JavaScript

3. Grasp any of the common JS frameworks (not jQuery)

4. It’s terribly fascinating to grasp lowlife, SASS / LESS, things don’t seem to be difficult, however quite common.

5. Node.js also will be a and, however not such a lot of studios have learned to figure with it, not each studio can take into account it a big bonus, so it’s fascinating to find out a way to hump as an example mobile applications or browser games, therefore {you can|you’ll|you may} open a brand new niche to the corporate and that they will take you with joy.

Here are the skills included in the courses within the first page of Google results for “front-end courses”:

Skills The number of times this technology is included in the course

• HTML\CSS 9
• Bootstrap 4
• jQuery 7
• PURE JavaScript (basics) 6
• PURE JavaScript (advanced, OOP and so on) 2
• PURE JavaScript (many additional features, high advanced) 1
• Angular.js, React.js, Ember.js 3
• SASS / LESS 3
• Git 2

Of course, overlapping skills may be during a totally different course, however, we glance at precisely what is conferred within the course programs on sites as “Front-end course”.

• On average, all courses with a good program last about 6 months.

• Nobody forgot to include HTML in the course, except for one company, they are on the Front-end course, they learn Node.js with some kind of frightenance, bypassing browser JavaScript.

• Many learn jQuery, not forgetting to add to the Git program, but only a third of the courses included a framework from the Angular \ React \ Ember list in the program.

• No program had a complete list of skills, from those that we saw in the vacancies.

• Almost all courses called the program “Front-end course” or a similar combination with the word “Front-end”, but only half had it in the JS program, in several cases JS was offered as “some advanced Front-end course for gurus,” that is, basic skills were disguised as advanced. By the way, 30% of the courses did not offer anything other than HTML \ CSS, that is, there was not even jQuery.

A cursory review of the rest of Google’s pages showed that the most expensive courses are some of the worst, not very expensive, but well-known ones are somewhere in the middle runner, but cheap ones are as lucky as they are, or what is needed, or a complete divorce. I think there is a direct dependence of the cost and popularity of advertising investments.

By the way, who are interested in specific courses, send a link to Skype, analyze, publish a brief summary of their program.

“You are employed”, seriously? =)

This point is the most popular divorce among known ones. You can immediately close the course page if you give a 100% guarantee or what it is, it just causes a smile, strikes the number of people who believe in it.

Let’s think a bit:

– Abstract people graduated from courses with poor skills.

– a kind of web studio, agreed to take a person with poor skills and pay him a salary from his own pocket, because some courses asked for them.

You can plant a money tree, they say some Buratino managed to get rich so much, or try some luck in a financial pyramid, there are definitely more chances.

They take a job because the employee will bring money to the company, and for this the employee must have certain skills. The dependence here is simple, you will have good skills – you will be sought and not you begging to take them to yourself, but the “training interview”, the companies also “train”, they have already been a couple of hundred of them trained, and you will be one hundred first to take them away time.

No, of course it’s necessary to be able to make a resume for technical specialties and of course there are a couple of practical tips at the interview, but they all aim to show your skills and not to deceive a handler, you need skills first and foremost, not cunning. The trick will be revealed, you will fly out of work, and with due diligence you will also be blacklisted, after which you will never get a normal job in an IT company.

All that shines with bad skills is a third-rate web studio, with a low salary, since you will be a maker-up there and not the fact that it’s good, but layout is something that any novice web programming specialist can do, a crazy competition for every vacant place, they have will be with whom to choose.

“To pay for some ephemeral employment with the cost of the course,” I write about it and I am again drawn to laughter. You can call a relative and ask to attach a son, this often happens, nepotism in our country is very common, but we are talking about courses, where it happens in large quantities, so let’s think again.

A certain abstract uncle, once every 3 months is able to attach from 20 people without skills to a huge salary in a company that most likely will not even be Ukrainian? Yes, if such idiots and meet, litter for the vocabulary, the company paying such “experts” will go bankrupt.

Let’s count a little more, imagine that there are more than 20 such courses in Kiev alone, and everyone promises to be employed. To employ 400 people for at least $ 500, this is $ 200 thousand per month at least, and every 3 months the sum grows by another $ 200 thousand. At least, 15,600,000 dollars will be released annually, and next year there will already be about 600,000,000 dollars, since the progression is geometric..

How does it happen then?

Even in bad courses, always in a group there are 1-2 people who did the work themselves, learned what is called, not because of, but in spite of, they found a job, at the expense of skills. Having entered into an agreement with the courses, they allowed to write courses that these 2 people learned thanks to them, although this is a hoax.

Therefore, once again, there will be skills, there will be employment, nothing more is needed here. Everything is elementary, a lot of competitors are not a problem for you, if you will be able to do everything you need, because they will not be able to do this, and they simply will not be taken, but you will be taken.

Do you additionally employ?

Someone with a keen eye will clearly notice that there are also courses at our web studio, but how then is employment? I explain, our courses at web studios, we are preparing specialists for ourselves and not for the general employment market. This is beneficial since even an experienced specialist has to retrain / retrain for the particular work of specific web studios.

The practice is widespread, you can find a lot of such studios with courses, as advertising I will post here and courses at our studio, the site is being completed, but the most important thing is the course programs, there are there. Let us return to the topic, the actual low qualification from typical courses and makes it necessary for web studios to create their own courses, but in advertising there is not much opportunity to invest in such courses. Why? Here, for example, the introductory course is 1,800 per month, with a maximum of 15 people, for a total of 22,500 per month, money! = D just kidding. Only the teacher’s salary is 7200, rent is 32 thousand (for the courses it was necessary to expand the office to 200 squares), depreciation, free coworking for students, sometimes even goes to minus with advertising, and money is taken from the studio’s budget and not from the courses.

Why it cannot be done normally?

After all, it is logical, from the point of view of the courses, that it does not matter to them to teach good or bad; for them, the client must be content and carry money. But, why not try to do it normally?

In a shell – lack of personnel.

It just so happens that most of the existing C programming languages ​​are similar. That is, once a language like C was invented long ago, and most modern languages ​​were written on it. Sometimes a language was written in C, and another language was written in this language, but C was still listed in the ancestors. Even when languages ​​were not written based on C, they often used C similar syntax, since programmers wrote, among other things, owned several C similar, and therefore transferred the developments from there. There are a lot of materials on this subject on the Internet to tell what the fundamental nature of this language is for a long time, but it turned out that almost all of the existing modern Japanese are very similar to each other and differ mainly in small details and the list of possibilities, for this reason, having studied the programmer Jap, it is easy to study the second one, since he, as a matter of fact, he knows by 50-80% of the second.

And now JS. So it was fate that JS was created in 10 days.

When you do something, then you begin to improve it, improve it and pull on it the successful solutions that you have seen somewhere before. But the author had only 10 days, there was simply no time for all these improvements, because JS was born as he was originally intended by the author, and not by another C like brother. He certainly has a similar syntax and a lot more of that, and the JS history has been charging for many years, it acquired functions that were not written for 10 days, but the basic principles were always the same, because JS remained the white crow among languages.

I do not want to say that he uses some very tricky squiggles, invented for 10 continuous drinking or taking any prohibited substances, but such an opinion used to be very common, I even divided it, but this is not so, everything is completely different.

In 2011, JS was, somewhere in the depth of popularity, I said the depth and not the end of the popularity list for a reason, I think you understand what I mean. It existed only because all the analogues were even worse, but at the same time everyone hated him terribly and tried to avoid any complicated functions.

Why? In general, a lot of people among programmers tried to learn JS, they didn’t get anything, because as they said earlier, they tried to learn it with a swoop, just like regular C without even reading the documentation. They used the same techniques as in other languages, the same operators, and of course it all didn’t work for them at all or didn’t work as they would have liked. Without understanding, these people considered JS to be some kind of esoteric thing, and all the bugs were written off by the browser vendors, but they opened the unit documentation, because they are not noobs, experienced programmers, you can not read, because at first glance, everything is so similar to what they taught .

Such browser anti-advertising caused the browsers to loosen error control over JS, because the site’s users won’t explain that it’s not the programmers ’hands, they’ll simply change the browser to the one where your favorite site works correctly, in the end everything was written off to JS’s bug , although there were no bugs.

This went on for a very long time and normal JS programmers, according to the modern front-end users simply did not appear, they were not needed by anyone, in principle.

But marketing developed and demanded new! Here and there, different cool things made by JS skipped and the business began to put pressure on programmers, answers like “it’s okay to do nothing” were met by worthy “and they did it there, and they talk for 15 minutes without bugs”. In general, from about 2011, interest in JS began to grow exponentially, and all because some programmers were forced to read the documentation, they read, imbued and were stunned. By the way, I was among them.

So, the study of JS remains a challenge for any programmer who has already taken place, there is still an opinion that “JS is a buggy, esoteric thing,” and for about 15 years new JS specialists appeared very rarely, what do we have as a result? Staff hunger.

Yes, this is the very boom that you are observing now, this is a very big, gigantic explosion of vacancies, all the front-runners were needed sharply, to implement their super-duper interfaces, and there was not a shortage of them, there was a shortage of senior specialists, only a small percentage can adequately teach the young. And I’m talking about big companies, and you hope that the banal courses dramatically dig out an adequate JS teacher somewhere, of course, these teachers are in a huge shortage and mostly on those very courses at web studios.