[jcun4128]

Not sure if you mean maintainability/ability to add future stuff. With that in mind for me it's to do some form of breaking things up so the side effects/remembering is low. Sucks to make a change and have to remember how everything works. In this case tests are nice for regression.

[2bor-2n]

Yes that's exactly what i meant by scaling the frontend (maintainability and ability to add new features easily). What's the tech stack you use on frontend? And for testing which library do you prefer? Do you rely on unit and integration testing only to avoid any regression?

[jcun4128]

Just FYI I'm a mid-level SWE at this time. Not an expert. This is just what I've encountered (corp day job) and personal pains of my own code.

I primarily use ReactJS.

We used a domain-driven pattern. Although there is still that component parent hierarchy thing going on.

TDD (tech design doc), write the code, linter, unit tests (Jest/Enzyme eg. render part of component take code snapshot, assert stuff) and then WDIO for visual regression testing (image diffs). It is a time consuming thing to setup but when you have like 600tests it's nice/assuring. Then it runs on a pipeline (Jenkins) for about an hour before it gets released to some domain.

Personally I am still in the get it done/MVP stage. The above is ideal case when you're established/dealing with many other people changing code.

I am going with a Selenium/functional test though personally for the thing I'm working on now (2-way real time interactive app).

There's different ways to test stuff depends what your thing is. The TAs I worked with use Eggplant.

The main thing though about separation of concerns is important when possible just to reduce cognitive load for the next stuff you add.

[2bor-2n]

Thanks for the insight. BTW how many years of experience do you have?

[jcun4128]

The above process I described I've been doing for over 2 years. I will be leaving them soon though.

Personally I've started learning since 2013, but I was still in jQuery/PHP days around that time. Didn't pick up React until like 2017. Now everything I do is JS based for the most part except things like Python/C++.

Professional experience about 4 years or so.

If you're just starting there's a developer roadmap (on GitHub) you might find interesting about all the different directions you can take.

Oh if you want to get your feet wet with ReactJS fast, I'd recommend Traversy Media's React JS crash course on YT. They're like an hour long. I say they're because he updates them per year.

Also if you look at the monthly HN who's hiring JS/React/Python are usually always at the top of the list in demand. Does depend where you're looking but yeah.

[2bor-2n]

Thanks for the recommendations. I am already familiar with React, had built a web app at the start of the year. I had some unsuccessful interviews a couple of months ago for a React position and this question came up from the interviewer (it was a senior position) so I posted it here to know what are the approaches other devs are following here.

Right now i am working on a JavaScript/jQuery SPA, a huge app and a lot of bad approaches and coding conventions. I am going to resume with react ecosystem again to update myself with the current industry trends.

[johntdaly]

I’m not trying to be mean here but the rough experiences you are having with jQuery are not really going to go away with React. I would also not call anything a SPA without a solid router and honestly I doubt the jQuery app has that.

Even if you don’t want to use one of the larger frameworks like Angular or Ember I would still recommend doing a couple of tutorials to see how they construct things. Any app needs an architecture and you are more likely to get a feel for that with something larger like Angular or Ember.

Alternatively find something that can teach you about front end architecture. An SPA is more than a router, views/components and state management (and libs and service objects). Look around a bit to figure out how you want to architect things and what concepts exist.

[jcun4128]

Yeah I'm not sure what direction you're taking but the SPA can be just its own thing interacting with APIs or server-side rendered. Also your back end, I would recommend knowing MySQL or SQL in general so you have that under you.

But yeah ReactJS is good to know/has huge market share. I'm glad I picked it over Vue/Angular.

If you're looking for something else to learn, being able to setup a Node backend with auth is nice to have as well eg. using JWT. Then knowing general best practices about security eg. XSS/sql-injection.

But yeah... Depends what direction you're taken eg. strictly front end or both.

Anyway good luck.

Check out CSCareers the subreddit if you haven't already. That is more for school/compsci but can help with how to get jobs. And have a good GitHub/LinkedIn.