7 Ways to Improve Your Web Development Skills

Web development is an ever-evolving field. That’s why professionals must keep improving skills to reach new heights. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced designer, you should always strive to optimize your code for performance, readability and maintenance. These are the top ways to improve your web development skills.

How to Improve Your Web Development Skills

1. Practice Coding Every Day

Any seasoned developer will tell you the best way to improve your skills is to practice coding every day. While this advice sounds obvious, it works. 

If you want to get better at developing, you have to turn it into a daily habit. Fostering a routine establishes two critical benefits.

First, all of those hours you spend practicing add up quickly. Before you know it, you’ll accomplish projects left and right. As a result, you gain knowledge and the experience needed to hone your craft.

Second, developing websites every day will make you feel like a true professional. You’ll quickly see yourself as a real developer, boosting your confidence. Higher confidence means you’ll be more willing to try new things and take risks.

2. Work on Passion Projects

Suppose your first steps towards becoming a professional developer are laborious and unpleasant. In that case, you can quickly lead yourself to burnout. To avoid this challenge, pursue areas of web development that get you excited. 

You might have those inevitably low moments where you ask yourself if this is what you truly want. However, working on a passion project gives you a better chance of success because you’ll care more about the big picture. Plus, when you genuinely care about something, it makes the work of web development that much easier.

3. Contribute Your Work to Open-Source Projects

Immerse yourself in code when working on open-source projects on platforms like GitHub. You can either work on existing projects or create your iteration of one. You can also make positive changes by helping the project reach its final stage. Or you improve the project’s stability by fixing minor bugs.

Whichever option you choose, you lead yourself to understand code better. In addition, you expose yourself to new codes which could show you a better way of developing.

Moreover, you get to collaborate with others — becoming an invaluable learning opportunity. In any open source community forum for software, you’ll find skilled coders who’ve been working at building knowledge for years. Pay attention to what they have to teach you.

4. Challenge Yourself to Learn a New Skill

Although it’s important to practice areas of development you enjoy, it’s just as beneficial to seek new challenges. When you try out new ideas, you force yourself to learn new skills. The more skills you build, the more it benefits your career.

Consider digging into on a tool or technique you struggle with, try a new language or build something without using a framework. If figuring out the coding becomes too easy, it isn’t much of a challenge and you likely need to stretch yourself a bit more.

Additionally, you could challenge yourself by picking up small gigs online on one of the many freelance platforms that offer these. Look for things you can complete with your network of mentors and colleagues. You don’t want to take on a project and let the client down, but it’s also okay to learn something new and stretch your skills.

5. Read About Your Industry

You have a lot to gain from picking up a book. The amount of detail an author includes in a book you can’t find in an article, a YouTube video or Codecademy. Whichever level of a developer you are, you can always learn something from a new programming book.  

If you’re looking for a book recommendation, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide offers everything you need to know about JavaScript programming. Plus, it provides plenty of coding examples — making it a suitable book for practicing code.

6. Teach a Class

What areas are you already skilled in? Would you like to become known as an authority in those areas? One of the best ways to really know a topic is to teach a class on it. You’ll be forced to think through the basics of the idea before you talk to others.

Your students will likely ask questions you aren’t sure of, forcing you to figure it out. The more confidence you grow with your responses, the more comfortable you’ll be in those areas. Teaching a class works best when you have more knowledge than your students but their curiosity forces you to learn alongside of them.

Some people worry web development is dying because of WYSIWYG editors meant to do much of the heavy lifting. However, these tools are more about making designers’ jobs easier and enhnacing their abilities than replacing the need for staff. For example, researchers predict web development will grow to 205,000 people by 2030.

7. Take a Break

Keeping up with new technology, such as artificial intelligence and cloud-computing can fry anyone’s brain–even the most dedicated and sharpest web developer. Sometimes you need to walk away from a difficult project.

When you’re aggravated, it can be hard to see the solution to the problem. Go for a walk, take the day off or talk to some other developer friends about the struggles you’re facing. With a little room to breathe, you might just find the solution comes much easier than when you’re at a high stress level.

8. Gain Soft Skills

In addition to improving coding and design knowledge, you’ll want to update your soft skills. For example, brush up on communication so you can talk to your clients and fully understand what they want from a project.

Learn research skills and find new ways to test designs to make sure they function as needed. Knowing how users respond to different interfaces and even colors can make the difference in an okay design and a striking one.

Look for areas where you can improve. Do you need to be more organized? What do you need to achieve that goal? Do you lack networking opportunities? Which conferences or local events would help you meet those who might enhance your career as a developer?

Be aware if the helper roles that take your design work to extraordinary. With a little added effort, you’ll be a whole package as a web developer. Clients will clamor to hire and pay you top dollar for your expertise.

Start to Improve Your Web Development Skills Today

Programming can be an exciting field — it is challenging and rewarding. No matter where you are in your journey, use these tips to improve your craft and push yourself further. Before you know it, you’ll be the person teaching others web development skills and setting new trends in the industry. Get started today and see where the next few years take you.