This article has been around for some time now, but I only recently discovered it. In A Baseline For Frontend Developers, Rebecca outlines some essential skills that one requires to be successful as a frontend web developer in the current climate. What’s particularly interesting is how Rebecca highlights how much things have changed for frontend developers in recent years.

No longer is it enough to be able to use CSS and HTML and when it comes down to it, a little bit of JavaScript and jQuery. Now, to stay up to speed a developer is expected to have extensive knowledge of JavaScript, test-driven development, Git and GitHub, modularity and dependency management, production builds, the command line, preprocessors for CSS and process automation. Frontend development has evolved way beyond making simple websites; it has become its own form of software development, requiring much more specialised expertise and tools.

I think that this is a great thing for frontend developers and web developers in general, as it turns the profession into something with much more craft and discipline, that takes dedication and hard work to become proficient in. Applying software development processes to frontend development is evolving our industry into something much different, and in my opinion much better, than it was ten years ago. I’m excited to see where web development heads in the next few years and judging by what has happened so far, we only have good things to look forward to.