A good front-ender knows when to change something and knows when to leave things as they are.

It’s a hard question, as the field and scope keep evolving. Once, HTML, CSS, and JS were enough. Then came jQuery. Now we have next-gen JS libraries like Angular, React, and Vue.

Today, a good Front-End Developer also needs to embrace all these new stacks, and also have an understanding of how pre-processors, modules, and bundling works, and use them as necessary tools. Having knowledge of how (web)servers work, microservices and their APIs, databases, containers, etc, etc, also vastly helps to be a good Front-End Developer. On top of that, there’s SEO, speed optimization, and caching. And if you know how to navigate, or even code a bit, in the backend then you have a lot of opportunities.

A good Front-End Developer embraces all these things. So it’s no longer just styling elements and text, and manipulating the DOM. He/she needs to own the DOM.

In my personal opinion, a good front-end developer is one for whom performance, maintainability, debugging, SEO, and (especially) accessibility are not afterthoughts, but an integral  Learn more here about front-end developer

A good front-end developer can create a killer speech bubble I can offer nothing but this: Front-end developers are probably very talented plate spinners. Or were you an octopus in a previous life?

I Think A good front-end developer must be capable create an environment based on the best design and user need, given different devices, browsers, usability, and SEO, with clean and simple code.

A good front-end developer knows the “why” behind everything. In a general sense, a good developer is someone who works together with others. Knows how to make the whole team proud of the same project they’re making. A good developer has good introspection capabilities, knowing and accepting that they could be wrong. In essence, a good developer does what is best for the product and doesn’t include too much pride.

Can be very difficult of course. I’ve got to admit I’m not always the best developer. Accessibility is probably one of the most important but oft-neglected aspects of a good front-end dev. If you don’t know how to do accessibility basics, you don’t care about accessibility; if you don’t care about that, you don’t care about your users.

I think a good front-end developer cares about the people who will be consuming the code they write. Both the users of the website or app they’re building and the other developers who have to support and maintain their code. It doesn’t matter if you know the technologies inside out if you’re building bad experiences or your code can’t be easily maintained.

A good front developer can zoom out from their screens to see and appreciate the broader problems around them that need solutions. Not all problems can or should be solved with a rewritten function, a newer framework, or a different language. Sometimes the best solution is completely low-tech and is found by just getting a group of people to talk to each other.

A good front-end developer works as effectively with people who are different from them as people who are similar and doesn’t put themselves or anyone else in a box. A good front-end developer is always learning, but pacing themselves and maintaining a healthy balance while doing it.

I think what makes a good frontend-dev is in the end what makes a good software developer in general:

Constantly learn and communicate. This means sharing what you know but also asking questions about things you don’t. Nobody knows all technologies perfectly and that's okay (I hope), but you need to know what your client needs and deliver that...and don’t use ! important in your CSS :D

Front-end developers take a holistic look at the architecture of the software they and their team create.

I think we need to move away from the term myself. PHP/ASP developers are dying off. Thoe people are moving into mobile development or JS. We should split the old-school “front end” into UX Engineers and Javascript Engineers IMO.

 They are different mindsets. Most people are not amazing at both JS and CSS. It’s usually either/or. Let UX Engineers work closely with UX/Design to create great interactions, prototypes, interaction events, etc, and let JS Engineers handle all the data part. Just my 2 cents. So sick of being great at CSS but being forced into JS. 

I hope so far you have learned how to be a front-end developer!