Interview With a Front-End Developer

Hey Folks,
So I will try and keep this short as the real content of this post is of course the video itself and the wonderfully wise words that my interviewee delivers.

If you are interested in Front-End development (Front-End Web Development) at all then this interview style video is for you. I basically talk to a professional Front-End developer all about his job, his career and importantly the tools of his trade. I discuss what a day in the life of a front-end developer looks like and some of the big software/tools that are used in the process.

Anyway, I thought I would just post it here to you wonderful people incase anyone had an interest and the cool dude that I interview (Joe) is awesome, he is genuinely one of the nicest people I have ever met and he is also brilliant at what he does! He is intelligent and wise and has been a Front-End (Web) developer for a long time and has many insightful lessons to impart about his experiences. I honestly learnt so much just interviewing him so I am sure you can gather a bunch of useful information (or at least jumping off points) that you can take back to your respective companies or places of work/deving...

This video in total is nearly half an hour long so for your benefit I have included in this post the questions that I asked and timestamps to those questions in the video so that you can jump ahead if you would like to. I have also included links that are discussed in the video so that if you don't even want to watch the video then you can at least gain something from this post in regards to places online where you can learn more about Front-End Development and the tools used in that world! (The actual video is at the bottom)

Links discussed in the video

CSS-tricks
https://css-tricks.com/

Smashing magazine
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Html goodies
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/

MDN (Mozilla Developer Network)
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn

Wes Bos Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/wesbos

Kent Dodds Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/kentdoddsfamily

React Js:
https://reactjs.org/

React Native:
https://facebook.github.io/react-native/

VSCode:
https://code.visualstudio.com/

Webpack:
https://webpack.js.org/

Babel:
https://babeljs.io/

ESlint:
https://eslint.org/

Jest:
https://jestjs.io/

Cypress:
https://www.cypress.io/

Webdriver.io:
https://webdriver.io/

Browserstack:
https://www.browserstack.com/

NodeJS and NPM:
https://nodejs.org/en/
https://www.npmjs.com/

Questions that are asked and their timestamps

01:16 - Who are you? What do you do?
01:33 - What is the difference between a front-end & a web developer
02:30 - How did you get into front-end dev?
04:34 - How did you transition back into tech after studying physics?
06:59 - Any advice you would give to someone wanting to become a front-end dev?
08:18 - Any good online learning resources?
10:02 - Any good front-end dev Youtubers?
10:29 - What is React?
12:29 - What is the difference between React & React Native?
13:10 - Is Angular JS similar to React?
13:33 - What would you warn people about before getting into front-end dev?
15:33 - What is your dev setup?
17:52 - What is the purpose/need for webpack?
19:36 - Any decent VSCode extensions that you use?
20:45 - How do you text your code? Automation/Unit?
21:29 - How do you test for all the different web browsers?
23:22 - What is NodeJS?
25:46 - Any important/useful Node packages?
26:43 - Fun Extra Questions...

The Video

Onwards

If you have ANY feedback or questions at all please let me know in the comments below or reach out to me on twitter:

My Twitter (@ben_kadel)

Or if you want to see more videos from my channel then here you go:

My Youtube Channel

Thanks for reading and possibly watching!