6 Most Common Mistakes of Every Junior Web Developer

Let’s face it: the IT industry can be a minefield for beginners. Here’s how it usually goes: you have zero to little idea what you’re doing, but you already have to choose between the front-end and back-end development path. “But what’s the difference?”, you ask yourself. Let’s say, though, that you did some research and decided that front-end development sounds like your thing. A second later you find yourself snowed under with dozens of funny names and acronyms - HTML, CSS, JavaScript… the list goes on. Yet again, you have to choose which of them will be useful to you in your brand new career. A little more reading and here you go - JavaScript seems okay, but you have no clue why exactly. Perhaps there’s something in this asynchronous thing. One way or another, when you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and study functions and variables, you notice all these 10 JavaScript Libraries You Must Know or Else Nobody Will Hire You with yet another pile of gibberish: Node, React, Redux, jQuery. Do you already feel like becoming a librarian instead?.

And all this is just the beginning. But really: we have all been there. We know how hard it is to start learning on your own and to grow into a branch you don’t know anything about. That’s why we prepared a list of six most common mistakes made by junior programmers - exactly what we would have loved to read when we were novices.

1. Learning the wrong things

There are enough resources around to intimidate every fresh developer. Books, e-books, free online courses, YouTube tutorials on all possible topics... What should you choose? It’s absolutely normal that as a beginner you don’t know where to start and whether you have to learn it all to get a job. It’s also natural that you don’t know which technologies are in vogue and which are in mothballs. For example, we had a student who was learning from a book published in 1997 and people who attended HTML4 classes 15 years ago and wanted to pick up from there.

The whole IT industry keeps changing, so the materials have short expiration date. For instance, that book from 1997 explained in the first chapter what the Internet is and showed the screenshots from Windows 95.

So when you are a rookie developer, your first problem is figuring out what you should actually learn. If you want to study just for yourself, choose whatever you want. But if you want to become a professional programmer, you should learn the things your future employer requires.

2. Not knowing how much you know

Many junior developers never publish their code. They study a lot, learn a little bit of everything and still they are not sure if they know enough to start working as a programmer. We once had a pre-sales question from a person who wrote a mobile application with GPS connection, which used heuristic algorithms to estimate how to improve the user’s workout routine. Mind you, a typical bootcamp candidate has never written a single line of code and has no idea what a heuristic algorithm is.

All in all, it’s hard to assess your knowledge, especially in the field you don’t know inside out.

3. Not knowing that you know too little

The same applies to people who learn too little, but they still think that they know a lot. Do you remember these online self-study courses where every two minutes you get a message like: “Congratulations, now you know this-and-that!? They can make you think that you’re all set up to conquer the world (or at least the IT job market). But are you really? In fact, these courses are like learning single words in a new language. You know some vocabulary, but it doesn’t mean you can write a coherent paragraph, let alone a poem. What you need is an experienced programmer to tell you what you know and what you don’t.

4. Not practicing enough.

The best way to learn how to code is… coding. Of course you need some theoretical background, but it should only be the introduction. The majority of your time should be spent on practical tasks and real-life projects. Don’t believe the ones who say you can learn to code just by watching someone code - you too have to get your hands dirty. At the interviews, developers are always given practical tasks. A theory is great for social gatherings ;-)

5. Learning only frameworks

Over the course of years, programmers have created numerous ready-made solutions for typical problems. Novice developers often think that it’s enough to find the right boilerplate or a code snippet, do some copy and paste et voilà! Their shiny new piece of software is ready. Except that it’s not.

Good developers do differently. Before they touch any boilerplate, they learn a vanilla language, so that they understand how boilerplates work under the hood. And if they need to switch to another framework or learn a new library, it’s easier for them to pick up the toolset. It works one way - if you know jQuery (a JavaScript library), you can have zero idea about JavaScript. But if you learn JS first, you’ll have no problem with learning any JS framework or library.

6. Unrealistic demands

This is the crowning of all the fallacies mentioned above. Relying on theory, not being able to assess one’s skills and lack of knowledge about the IT industry lead to unrealistic demands. Yes, it’s true that developers can earn a lot, but before this happens, they go all the way up from a novice to an experienced specialist. If you are a junior developer, don’t expect or demand a six-figure salary (or more).

And if you are a rookie, it’s best not to expect the option to work fully remotely after few months of training, to work only a couple hours a day with zero experience or to program robots with JavaScript.

Novice developers who avoid the mistakes listed above and keep working on their skillset can count for a quick promotion. The IT industry appreciates experience and the will to learn. Stay focused, give it some time, do your best from the very beginning and you’ll be just fine.