Role of a Front-End Developer 

Before we get into discussing the best practices of hiring remote front-end developers, let’s briefly understand what the role of a front-end developer entails.

Front-end developers are responsible for developing the looks of a website, but they do more than that. Front-end development is an important aspect of the entire development process. 

Besides knowing the front-end technologies and frameworks they should also have a fair idea of Agile and scrum development process, TDD (Test Driven Development), project management, collaboration tools, and more. 

While hiring remote front-end developers it will be critical to learn about the skills a good front-end developer should possess to complement your product development team. So, in the next section, we will look at how to ensure that you hire remote front-end developers who are best-in-class.

Tips to Hire Remote Front-end developers – Best Practices

Entrepreneurs are realizing the benefits that remote product development can offer. More and more enterprises will move to hiring remote teams rather than working with in-house ones for the cost and time benefit that it can offer. Front-end developers are a crucial part of the product development team and in recent years it has been a skill that has been extremely in demand. Why not? a front-end developer is the one who will make sure that the user has a good experience while navigating your website or app. 

So what are the technical skills that you should look for while hiring a remote front-end team? Let’s find out.

Technical Skills to Look for While Hiring Remote Front-end Developers

1. Technologies and Development Tools Proficiency

Usually, mobile app development requires full-stack development. In this case, IDEs (integrated development environments) and programming languages are optimized so that developers can work on both front-end and back-end development. 

However, in the case of website development, the scenario is different. For web development tech-stacks comprising different languages and software development tools including front-end development, back-end development, and a database language. So, depending on whether you want to hire a front-end developer for a website or mobile app development the skills you will assess will differ.

2. Coding Language Proficiency

Most popular front-end languages include React, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Angular, Swift, Vue, jQuery, Elm, etc. So, depending on the tech stack that the product development team decides on and the kind of website or mobile app you are planning to build – the language you will use differs. While hiring remote front-end developers ensure that they are proficient in the language which your project demands.

Further, if you are developing a mobile app, it will be critical that they are proficient in front-end languages for both Android and iOS. Another important factor to evaluate will be how updated the developer is with the trends and versions of these languages.

3. TDD (Test-Driven Development)

A front-end developer’s job doesn’t end at developing a great-looking website or app. They have to ensure that it is error-free, loads fast, and functions without any glitches. For this, they must be proficient in Test-Driven Development or TDD. TDD is an Agile development approach where developers write tests before getting into writing actual codes. If the codes pass the test, they use it. If not they keep writing it until the code passes the test. This approach ensures that only the best quality code makes it to the development table and this results in minimum errors in the final codes. In addition to that, it saves time and effort for the whole team.

4. Knowledge of Version Control or Git

During the front-end development process a code can go through multiple changes. It is critical that front-end developers have a fair idea of storing and tracking the codes on Git. Hence, they don’t have to start over every time a change is needed on the code. Git is an open-source platform where all the versions of a code can be stored, tracked, and shared. It will be critical to hire remote front-end developers who have proficiency in using version control tools like Git.

5. Testing and Debugging

Error-free codes are the foundation of a website or app that is robust and offers a great user experience. In an ideal situation, we would want the codes to be 100% error-free and work absolutely fine in the first go itself. While that might seem to be too idealistic, a good front-end developer will be able to drastically minimize the number of bugs, and the speed at which these are resolved. Precisely why while hiring a remote front-end developer assessing their testing and debugging skills would be crucial.

6. Responsive Development

Today consumers access a website or an app on multiple platforms. Sometimes they start exploring a website on a laptop and might continue with their search on mobile and again make a final purchase on a laptop. The customer journeys today are complex and definitely not linear. In that context, it becomes extremely critical to offer a great experience to customers irrespective of which platform they are on. Hence, it is crucial that the front-end developer must be proficient in responsive website development.

7. Browser Development Tools

Nowadays, most browsers give developers the option to test how their website will look on a particular browser and device. Whether it is Chrome, Safari, or Edge. The tools available within the browser allow developers to adjust the design according to the browser. Even though the tools vary, they will definitely have an inspector and a JavaScript console to enable them to design and make adjustments to the website as per individual browsers. While hiring a remote front-end developer it will be critical to check their proficiency with such tools.

8. Web Performance Tools

While aesthetics of a website or app is critical how much time it takes to load, how fast the images or interactive elements appear, are the few responsible factors that can make or break a user’s engagement with the platform. Precisely why, while hiring a remote front-end developer it will be critical to assess them on their knowledge of website performance optimization. 

Soft Skills to Look for While Hiring Remote Front-end Developers

Assessing the soft skills of the developers is as important as assessing the technical skills, if not more. Why?

It is because product development will not happen in siloes. A front-end developer will have to work with the project manager, back-end developers, testing team, and more. Effective collaboration can save time and cost. Hence assessing soft skills become critical, while hiring remote front-end developers.  So here are some soft skills that you must look for in remote front-end developers;

1. Understanding of Design

A front-end developer is responsible for making your website or app look good. Hence, it is critical that they have a great sense of design. The cherry on the cake will be if they have an understanding of basic UI design and graphic design principles.

2. Collaboration

As mentioned before, a front-end developer will have to work with various teams. Collaboration will be the key to getting the job done on time and with high quality, more so in a remote working model.

3. Communication

Effective communication can save your project from big mishaps and ensure work gets done efficiently. Especially while working with remote teams, written and verbal communication will play a critical role in the successful completion of the project.

4. Attention to Detail

In the software world missing out on small details can cost a lot, in terms of both time and money. Especially when it comes to front-end development. Since the front-end of your platform is the first thing a potential customer will see. Hence it will be important that the front-end developers have impeccable attention to detail skills.

Portfolio, Price, and References

While hiring a remote front-end developer you must look at their portfolio and experience. The kind of apps or websites they would have created in the past, have they done anything related to your domain, the quality of work, etc. 

These factors will be critical to assess before you decide to onboard front-end developers. Also, vetting the references in the portfolio will be critical. Last but one of the most important factors will be the cost involved. Especially, if your budgets are limited.

Wrapping Up

In the digital world, for businesses to thrive, an online presence is a must. A robust back-end and a beautiful and user-friendly front-end are hallmarks of a successful website or an app. A good front-end developer will ensure that visitors engage with the website or an app. With remote working picking up pace, the demand for front-end developers has also gone up.

At EngineerBabu we help enterprises of every scale hire remote front-end developers within a week. We ensure that you get the highest quality front-end developers armed with the best technical and soft skills. The best thing is hiring remote front-end developers is not just time-efficient but cost-efficient too. If you want to hire a remote front-end team for your project connect with us.

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Popular Web App Development Frameworks – Front-End & Back-End

Dissecting the Various Layers of Web App Development

A typical web application is conceptually split into three parts, with very well-defined responsibilities, challenges, and strategies in place. Understanding the key concepts of these three subsystems and the infrastructure behind them is important before we dive deeper into the details of the frameworks that are used for web app development.

1. The Client-Side a.k.a The Presentation Tier

The web application which we directly run on our desktop or smartphone browser is typically the client part of the web application. The client-side of the application mostly runs on a browser, but it is not limited to that. Browser applications’ de facto language of implementation is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Implementing an application in these basic techs is difficult for large-scale applications so there exist many frameworks for web app development that makes client-side development easy.

2. The Server Side a.k.a The Logic Tier

In the grand scheme of web app development, the server is a part that is responsible for the logic and data handling. The server gets requests from the client-side and then provides the appropriate response like data or functions as requested. 

3. The Database a.k.a Data Tier

Data is the king. Thus, in the case of many applications, a database is responsible for keeping the data safe and available when it is needed by the applications, Structured Query Language or SQL is one of the popular languages that is used to query these databases. Others are R, C#, Python, etc.

The Overall Infrastructure for Web App Deployment

The backend or the server side has to scale for many client-side applications. The back-end has to sometimes deal with a huge amount of data. Hence, it has to be available, scalable, and resilient. Some of the web applications are used across the world. Thus, the back-end servers are also spread across geographies and have to deal with country-specific policies for both data and feature management. Geo-based governance is an important part of any web application which is deployed across the world. 

Front-End Web App Development Frameworks 

The front-end of the web application is responsible for easy to use and functional interface. Beyond the front-facing design, the front-end is built on a fair amount of logic. It also require an appropriate level of data handling. In principal the front end of a web application is built out of the following units:

• HTML: The content that needs to be shown on the browser is built out of HTML. Thus, it turns into the DOM [document object model] for the browser to render.
• CSS: Cascading style sheets are responsible for the representation of the content. It represents how the content is displayed to the user. 
• JavaScript: The dynamic logic behind a web application that is responsible for the context-specific update of the web application is typically implemented in JavaScript. Therefore, JavaScript is like the language of the web which is understood by pretty much all browsers. However, many languages compile into JavaScript like TypeScript or CoffeeScript.

While the basic building blocks are the above three languages, there’s much more required to build a large and complex web application’s front end. We need to have frameworks in place that make it easier to develop the front-end. Let’s take a look at a few of these:

1. jQuery

jQuery is built on the idea of “do less, get more”, it wraps a lot of commonly used functions by the web applications developers and then provides simple to use APIs for the same. Such high-quality code being readily available to the developers means the difference between getting to concentrate on the task at hand or trying to reinvent the wheel. It also fixes interoperability between browsers

Features and Advantage

• jQuery is a JavaScript library that is lightweight and fast. It requires less time to travel through wire, load, and execute.
• jQuery makes DOM manipulation extremely simple and fast.
• jQuery simplifies AJAX call and DOM manipulation.

2. AngularJS

Angular.js is Google’s framework. It is supported by the tech giant and will be there for years to come. Hence, it is used to build dynamic web apps and SPAs (Single-Page Apps). 

Features and Advantage

• An instruction-based and easy-to-use interface, that makes it easy to build a UI that stays in sync with the updates of the application state.
• Model-View-Controller or (MVC) a software design pattern that gives an outline of how the front-end UI ideas should be organized into actual code.
• High-performance code and the regular update makes it dependable 

3. ReactJS

React.js was developed by Facebook and is known for its high performance. It is one of the most used front-end UI development frameworks and is a preferred choice for web app development.

Features and Advantage

• Virtual DOM (Document Object Model) that makes DOM updates lighting fast and efficient
• JSX allows putting HTML and JavaScript together for UI definitions

Mirror mirror on the wall – which is the fairest framework of them all?

According to a recent developers’ survey jQuery is the most popular front-end framework that is preferred among the developers for front-end development. ReactJS and AngularJS are not far behind. However, in comparison to AngularJS and ReactJS, the latter is the clear preference among developers for the front-end technologies for web applications. The reasons behind the popularity of ReactJS is easy to learn, fast, and heavily supported by the developer community.

With EngineerBabu you can access developers with expertise in all the above frameworks be it AngularJS, ReactJS, Python, and many more. See the range of our services here.

Back-End Web App Development Frameworks 

The technology spectrum for server-side back-end development can largely sub-divided into two parts i.e., the choice of the implementation language and the type of framework used. Both these aspects are related and impact the development and maintenance process of the back-end heavily. 

Let’s take a look at the most common programming languages and their supported frameworks:

• Python is a preferred language when it comes to complex app development – it is powered by the Django, Pylons, Flask frameworks. 
• JavaScript is emerging as another language of choice for the back-end developer because of frameworks like NodeJS.
• Java is a fast, scalable, and secure language. For web application development it generally works with the Spring, Struts, and Hibernate frameworks. J2EE is the widely use standard for enterprise applications in Java.
• Ruby is a programming language with many admirers. However, it has a low barrier to entry and allows you to create powerful apps in days. Ruby on Rails (RoR) is a mature open-source framework that makes development much easier.
• PHP is a widely adopted language. Laravel and Symfony are one of the most popular PHP frameworks.

Now let us take a look at some of these web app development frameworks mentioned above and dig a bit deeper into what makes them popular.

1. Django

Django is an open-source back-end framework based on Python. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. Django is good for sophisticated and feature-heavy data-driven websites. This back-end framework facilitates reduced implementation, reusability, and faster development.

Features and Advantages

• Ease-of-Use – Django is easy to use, and a low learning curve helps developers to speed up the entire development process from start to finish.
• Features – Django provides a wide variety of features to help users take care of some common web development requirements. Tasks such as user authentication, sitemaps, content administration, and much more can be easily implemented with this framework. 
• Security – Django framework has robust security and can easily prevent security issues, such as cross-site scripting, SQL injection, request forgery, and clickjacking. 
• Scalability – Django offers a high level of scalability that is the reason why many of the world’s leading websites rely on it.

2. Laravel

Lavarel is an open-source PHP web framework for developing web applications. It follows the model–view–controller (MVC) architecture. However, Lavarel also offers modular packaging with a dedicated dependency manager. It also provides ways of accessing relational databases along with maintenance and deployment utilities. It has an MIT license and is hosted on GitHub. 

Features and Advantages

• Authentication: Implementing authentication is quite simple with Laravel as it has simple authorization logic organization and easy control of access resources. 
• MVC Architecture Support: MVC architecture pattern support effectively separates presentation and business logic layers and offers many functions, facilitates better performance, and improves both scalability and security. 
• Cache Backends: Offers support for Redis, Memcached, and other widely-used cache backends. Therefore, tt access the file cache driver, which gets cache object storage in a file system and in-memory cache like APC or Memcached for larger apps.
• Template Engine: Features lightweight built-in templates that can be utilized for generating layouts and seeding contents. Designed for the development of both simple and complex sectioned layouts. 

3. ExpressJS

Express.JS is a Node.js web servlet framework that is open-source and available under the MIT license. Thus, it is used for building APIs and web applications. 

Features and Advantages

• Learning Curve – JavaScript is the most commonly used language for web front-end development. A lot of tutorials, code examples, and developer communities make it easy to start and master.
• Full-Stack JS Features – Node.JS allows the use of JavaScript for both the server-side and client-side applications. As a result, there is no need for separate engineers for front-end and back-end development. Great way to save time and money. 
• High Performance – The V8 JavaScript engine is fast, really fast. The engine has JIT which compiles the code into machine code and makes it run at native speeds. Non-blocking I/O operations speed up the execution as the code is waiting for some execution to end before moving forward. 

4. Spring Boot

Spring Framework is an open-source application framework in Java. Web Applications can use all the core features of this framework. Spring is a counterpart of the Java EE framework. While Java EE is a preferred language for monolithic legacy platforms. Whereas, Spring works great with microservices-based platforms.

Features and Advantages

• Initialization – SpringBoot performs lazy initialization. This drastically reduces the time for application start.
• Fluent Builder API – tools support inbuilt to build APIs from the framework itself.
• Liveness State – An application can notify if its internal state allows it to function or process recovery in case of a failure. 

Conclusion 

The web app development landscape is constantly evolving. Speed, security, and usability are the three critical factors that will determine the success of any web application. Along with this the seamless integration of technologies like voice, AI, AMP, etc. will also play an important role. The web app development teams of any enterprise will need to stay up-to-date with these trends and technologies and choose the right frameworks for web app development. With EngineerBabu building a full-stack development team with expertise in all the latest frameworks. Tell us your requirements.

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