Don’t make idols from frameworks

With today’s industry requirements to the knowledge of modern frameworks it’s easy to forget what every single framework has in common — HTML, CSS, JS.

Developers want to finish with the basics and get to a framework ASAP. When doing so they might have an idea that they don’t need HTML, CSS and JS anymore as everything is handled for them.

Despite that frameworks are awesome and make our lives much easier, every single framework is powered by fundamental web technologies. They are no substitute for fundamental web technologies by no means.

JavaScript

Although you don’t need to know JS on an advanced level to work with frameworks, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t improve your core JS knowledge. Frameworks only cover basic scenarios that are most commonly encountered by developers. Most — doesn’t mean all. This means that there will be cases when you will have to make a solution on your own. Without having a good understanding of JS you won’t be as effective at this.

Frameworks come and go

JavaScript stays here until the end of the web. When you learn new JS features, improve your knowledge in writing solutions in pure JavaScript — nothing will stand in your way of doing the job. Furthermore, all frameworks are built on top of JavaScript, which means that there is no magic behind them and it all comes down to algorithms and regular JavaScript capabilities. This means that you are capable of writing a framework yourself (doesn’t mean you have to, though).

Deep knowledge of JavaScript and of one or more frameworks gives you a general understanding of how any framework is doing its job out there. This makes learning new frameworks much easier because the basics are the same, only framework-specific syntax changes. Hence, you are more versatile and not tied to using just one framework.

HTML

When working with frameworks it’s easy to forget about such primitive things as HTML. That it has a lot of available tags and attributes out there. While it’s technically possible to use divs everywhere, it’s much better to use appropriate tags. Not only does it make it easier to understand the markup for developers, but also it provides a better UX and accessibility.

Using buttons instead of divs with click handlers provides makes it possible to use the keyboard for navigating the website as well as assistive technologies.

Wrapping a button in a form tag enables the submit on Enter press feature with no extra handlers but “submit”. And so on.

CSS

CSS is getting more and more features nowadays. Same as with JavaScript you as a developer ought to keep an eye on new features. By doing so you can make your development smoother by using modern features, such as custom properties, grids etc.