Manik SharmaThe frontend development domain is rife with peculiar buzzwords that can baffle untrained ears. If you are a frontend developer new to the field, it will help if you familiarize yourself with these developer buzzwords. Being familiar with the industry vocabulary is an indicator of your skill versatility and experience handling projects. It acts as proof of your expertise. You will not feel left out when conversations around these frontend developer buzzwords happen.
This post lists the most popular front-end developer buzzwords that will make your journey into the industry much more straightforward.
1. Agile
A major buzzword in the software development industry is Agile. It is a methodology that offered an improvement over the waterfall methodology resulting in faster iteration and release of products. Agile web development is more common in the startup world. In agile methodology, web development teams work according to weekly or biweekly sprints. Sprint is the development cycle with five phases – design, develop, test, deploy, and review. Here, you can learn more about how agile methodology improves the development process and time-to-delivery.
2. API
Application Programming Interface or API is another important developer buzzword for front-end developers to learn. The core functionality of an API is to allow two different programs to communicate with each other. With APIs, front-end developers can make certain parts of their design available to back-end developers. Based on an API, several tools and widgets can be built that can be connected to a particular website. A payment gateway API is an example of how eCommerce websites accept payments. Here are some important browser APIs that front-end developers must be aware of.
3. Adaptive design
Also known as responsive design, it is a way in which a website is designed to adapt to the screen size of a device without breaking. The adaptive design creates websites in several layouts to fit different device screens. You will be asked to develop adaptive website designs as a frontend developer. Mobile-first is also a term used for adaptive design.
4. Bootstrap
A free and open-source frontend framework, Bootstrap is widely used in website and web app design. Developed at Twitter by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton, it brings consistency to your website design. Bootstrap is based on HTML and CSS. It uses the same technologies for design templates and elements like forms, typography, tables, buttons, modals, and more. Bootstrap is among the most common front-end developer buzzwords you will often hear in your career.
5. Cache
Website performance is augmented with the use of cache. A cache is temporary storage for data that the browser uses to store website data. When a user requests the same website data, it is fetched from the cache instead of sending a request to the server to download the resources again. It enables faster loading of web pages.
6. CI/CD
CI/CD stands for continuous integration and continuous delivery. It is a method to deliver apps frequently to the customers by introducing automation into the various stages of app development. The CI/CD is a solution where most problems arise from integrating new code into an existing code base. It helps development and operation teams to deploy app updates and features faster. Learn more about CI/CD here.
7. DOM
The Document Object Model or DOM is a cross-platform and language-independent interface used in web or app design. DOM treats XML or HTML documents as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a section of the document. Simply put, a DOM means any HTML or XML document in a logical tree for the browser to render. It is one of the most important developer buzzwords you must be aware of.
8. FCP
First contentful paint or FCP measures how long it takes the browser to render the first piece of DOM content after a user visits a web page. It is also one of the metrics that Google uses to evaluate the performance of a web page. Images, non-white <canvas> elements, and SVGs on a web page are considered DOM content, while iframe content is treated as non-DOM content. As a front-end developer, it will be your responsibility to keep FCP low. Google has a great resource on FCP and how to improve FCP scores.
9. Information architecture
Information architecture is the practice of organizing and representing complex information clearly and logically. In the context of website and app design, it implies creating a user-friendly navigation structure. Front-end developers and back-end engineers are information architects, too, in how they structure their code.
10. Minification
The last, but not least, front-end developer buzzword on our list is minification. It is the process of minimizing the markup and code to reduce the file size. When creating web pages, a developer will use spacing, comments, and variables to make code more readable, but it also increases the file size. Once a web page is live, the developer removes the spaces and comments to minify the code files.
Conclusion
This is no exhaustive list of the important front-end developer buzzwords, but it is enough to help you initiate the web developer talk. As you learn and grow in your career, you will come across many more developer buzzwords.
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Adarsh M
Afreen Khalfe
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