Skills You Need as a JavaScript Developer in 2021

Today we're going to talk about the top skills you need as a JavaScript developer in order to get a job.

One of the best and most important skills I think you could have as a JavaScript developer today based on 300 job listings from top tech companies in april 2019 and also in 2020 this is gonna be true the number one skill those people are looking for is React Js. React Js a JavaScript library so it's still JavaScript at the end of the day but react allows you to do really amazing things with JavaScript. Really really fast just think about like you take JavaScript you give it steroids you get react. It's basically JavaScript with super powers. Why should you use react ? Who else is using react? React Js being used by the top tech companies in the world some of those companies include tesla, reddit, whatsapp, facebook, instagram and paypal and so many other. Companies that are using react every single day that's what they're actually built on we have been live streaming every single day. React has something called a virtual dom which essentially means that it allows you to really change things on the dom really really really fast okay that's the most basic way to think about it. If you're on instagram and you type in a comment it doesn't actually refresh the entire page. What it's doing is it's only refreshing that comment that's why it's so fast. If you guys go to a bunch of apps like instagram, facebook you'll notice they don't actually refresh things happen in real time. When you click stuff or when you post stuff the whole page doesn't refresh all of that is happening because of react. React has reusable components this is another big thing about why you should actually learn and use react. What does it mean to have reusable components. Well in react when you develop you're actually building things and breaking them into separate components of their own.

Another skill that's very useful for you guys to learn is of course Node Js. Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment that runs on the V8 engine and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser.

Skill number three is Git. Now Git is essentially version control or how I think of it as kind of like a time machine. If you make mistakes it allows you to rewind in your app that you're making and go back.

Skill number four you need to learn to get a job as a JavaScript or a react developer redux. So redux is something that's hard to kind of grasp and understand. If I hit add to basket or add to cart button at the card button like maybe changes to one or it changes to two redux can allow you to do that without necessarily even hitting refresh and it can actually manage the entire state without ever having to go to another page or doing any type of redirect and so that state management is a very important skill. To learn as a JavaScript or a react developer but because redux is hard learn it in a two-step approach. The first step is actually learn something called context API and then go and learn redux as step two again none of these skills are highly paid on their own you kind of have to know multiple things right. If you want to be a chef you want to be good at cleaning you want to be good at like actually cooking you also want to know about spices. You can't just be like oh the only thing I do is like put it on the stove like i'm really good at like microwaving but any type of ecommerce functionality you want to add as a react developer you're going to need to learn redux.

Another skill that I want to kind of highlight here is you should learn typescript think about like react it allows you to write and react code but in a way where it is like more statically typed. What that means is you're declaring your data types as you go along. Now it might sound annoying to want to do that but what's amazing about it is that your code becomes a lot more robust, stable, way easier to read and you will make much less errors on top of that it's a skill a lot of people are looking for in a developer and they're willing to pay a much higher amount to work with somebody who understands and knows typescript.

Learn Firebase. Firebase allows you to do everything, aws allows you to do. I've built tons of things with aws and I've built a bunch of things with Firebase. So much easier to go with Firebase. Firebase is built by google. Anything you can do in aws it's 100 times thousand times easier to do it in Firebase. Definitely don't start with aws you're gonna get into a nightmare with aws. You have to like learn about how does redshift database work oh I also have to go to my security groups and like whitelist ip addresses.

Number seven is learn Rest Apis. If you want to do any type of web development learn apis. They're so powerful and almost every single application you're gonna try to build or use is going to require apis either that's going to require you to learn how to use api so you can pull data from it and do stuff with it or people want you to build apis for them. So like hey take my json file and turn it into api so I can use it from anywhere or take my database turn it into an api so I can use it from cloud anywhere in the world. There's tons of functionality and use cases for how you can use apis. I think you should definitely have this in your toolbox as a software developer, JavaScript developer or web developer.

So there you guys go the top seven skills you need to become JavaScript or a react developer and get a job and actually get your dream job. If you practice and learn and through project based learning you could definitely learn these skills and master them.