Overcoming Struggles as a Senior Frontend Developer
Let's chat about the tough stuff and cool stuff in being a developer. It's all about getting through the hard times, finding balance, and remembering, you're not alone in this wild ride.
👋 Hey, David here! Welcome to my weekly newsletter. Each week, I share my journey as a frontend developer and an expat. Sometimes more.
Whatever your experience and your passion, you are currently facing some sort of struggle. It could be a technical one as it could be a human one.
Technical struggles are usually easier to identify. Maybe you feel you are spending too much time trying to resolve a ticket or task. What you think would be a breeze turns out to be a real pain. If you are part of a team, this type of struggle could be manageable with the help of your coworkers. Nothing beats a nice pair-programming session. I personally often call one of my coworkers just to get a new pair of eyes on what I’m doing. More times than I can count, I was able to find my blockers just by explaining it to someone else.
Then you have those technical struggles that could be tied to not knowing enough about a specific topic. Thankfully, we have nowadays so many resources to help us (I’m not even talking about AI), blogs, forums… With patience and dedication, even if you are a junior developer, you should find a way to resolve any struggle you may have with code.
But it’s the human struggles that may affect us the most and thus, are also the most challenging and hard to face. As a Senior Frontend Developer, I often get frustrated by not knowing how to convince project managers. It’s something I have been dealing with, for years. As developers, our vision and perception of things are different. We spend days writing code, testing, reading about others' experiences and finding the multiple solutions that could solve the problems we face in different ways.
We are problem solvers.
It doesn’t matter how many projects you have worked on, how many companies you’ve worked with, how many countries you have lived in. Convincing people and explaining all the reasons you may suggest one approach over another can be a real challenge. I know it is for me.
Some people struggle in accepting the mistakes they make at work. And this makes me particularly sad. Dealing with issues and problems all the time may sometimes affect our perception and put a lot of pressure on us. Call them “perfectionists” if you want, and I know I was part of this group just a few years ago. Maybe I still am sometimes. But I found it hard to put so much weight on trying to accomplish what we are not supposed to.
Not that challenges are not a good thing, but it always depends on where you want to put the limit and find your balance.
When I was a more junior developer, I would dedicate a good amount of time to trying to get better. I have no regrets (except when I burned out twice and went to the hospital). But the years have taught me to always try to find a balance. So that my energy and time serve something that is bigger than myself.
Spending time with family and friends or even strangers and creating new connections is crucial for any human being. And I have learned to value that as much as I value my passions.
But maybe, the most important message I want you to get after reading this is that whatever your struggle, whether it’s a human struggle, a relationship struggle… you are far from being alone on this journey. A friend, a coworker, even your manager could be the only thing you need to help you get out of this struggle and learn from it.
Our job (more a passion for me) is not the easiest one, but it’s also not the most complicated. I’m grateful for being in this field and I hope you feel it too.
Something that made me laugh this week
I have been following Heydon on Twitter for a long time but never saw a post about it’s amazing videos on https://briefs.video. I’ve watched all of them and maybe one of my favourite is “What is ARIA even for???”. This is a must watch for any frontend developer!
And if you like those videos as much as I do, support Heydon on Open Collective or buy a T-shirt or hoodie. I have ordered a tee-shirt, will share a picture once I’ll receive it!
Something I built
Last week, I released a brand new Github Action called “Publish Release Info”. At my company, we wanted to find an easy way to be alerted by a new release with a list of the changes made (changelog) and specially notify automatically the contributors on Slack.
It took me 2-3 days to completely build the action, spending a lot of time on Github and Internet but not really finding documentation or even tutorials on how to actually build an action. I’m pretty happy with the result but definitely want to learn more about everything that can be done with those.
Feel free to test it and submit any bug or feature on Github!
My desk setups
Last week I’ve got a tweet from Bandos_1000 wanting to start his new “Developer Setup” website talking about my home office setup. I was happily surprised and promised him to send some pics over the weekend.
Then I got the idea of showing up how my setup evolves depending on the activities I do. First my usual/normal setup, then when I play on my Novation Keyboard, when I do some electronics then when I do some craft and try to learn how to draw.
This made me revisit my https://kit.co/thedaviddias with all the latest gear I upgraded and write a quick article on my blog.
But if you want to support Bandos and his new website, visit his newly created article. I’m sure he will appreciate it!
New supporter page on my blog
Since the Front-End Checklist project in 2017, many companies and persons have giving me financial support through Open Collective. But until last week, I have been really bad in demonstrating my recognition and gratitude to all those people.
I decided to create a dedicated “supporter page” on my blog and showcase my past and current sponsors. This is a small gesture on my part but which I hope all those people will appreciate.
I have also cleaned up my sponsor page on Github where my goal is to get 10 monthly sponsors to help me building more tools for the community
Open-source projects I found interesting
Twenty: a nice open-source CRM with a pretty clean design. Based on the upcoming features, seems that they are going to grow the project with more functionalities.
Amplication: defined as an open-source development platform to create and scale Node.js applications. Haven’t tested it yet but seems interesting.
Auto-form: react component that automatically creates a @shadcn/ui form based on a Zod schema. I’m always a fan of automatic generated form.
Skeet: is an open-source serverless framework for apps that use Firebase.
A song I have discovered
I’m a big fan of music score. Not just because I’ve played an instrument for many years. Musics without lyrics is for me the best music for when I’m doing some heavy work.
I’ve discovered this remix from 2Hooks which got me pretty inspired and I wanted to share with you all.
This is a wrap
This was my first newsletter and I hope you will like the content I curated. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts and ideas so I can make it better!
(Disclaimer: none of the content above has been written or suggested by any AI tool. This is my own and personal content.)
Photo used as thumbnail is by christopher lemercier on Unsplash
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