5 Must-Have Technical Skills As A Developer

As a programmer, it’s important to know the right skills and technology you need in order to build your own application or website. On the other hand, many developers still neglect learning the broader technical skills that are integral for building a high-quality product.

This is why Developer Magazine created this resource for people who want to learn about some core technical skills every freelance developer should master. Whether it’s software development best practices and tools, front-end coding environments like Bootstrap or AngularJS, or mobile app development frameworks like Ionic, Backbone, or Flutter — they’re all here.

And if you’re more interested in mobile application development, how to build a native mobile app, or how to create an iOS app, you’ll find the resources you need here.

Here is the list of 5 must-have technical skills as a developer:

1) Software development best practices and tools
Probably the most important thing that every developer should master is learning software development best practices and tools. Good programming skills are the foundation of a good application or website.
What are software development best practices and tools? Software development best practices include following the coding and design guidelines of your programming language, while tools are software utilities that make building applications easier. And knowing these can really improve both – your programming code (quality) and the time spent on your project.

2) Test-driven development
Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development process in which you first write tests that define the desired function of your application and then use those tests to ensure that your code works.
A good example of TDD is Selenium — an open-source framework for automating web applications using acceptance criteria in the form of functional test cases.
Developers can use it to automate functional testing across many different browsers, platforms, and devices, as well as in headless mode.

3) Front-end coding environments
A Front-end coding environment is a group of tools that help you design and implement complex web applications faster and more efficiently. The main focus of these tools is to make developers’ lives easier while allowing them to build complex wizard interfaces, dashboards, and many other useful things.
These days there are a number of great options that allow developers to build complex web applications faster and more efficiently: Bootstrap, AngularJS, Backbone, or Flutter. So if you want to build a high-quality web application, you’ll definitely need to learn at least one of them.
One of the most popular front-end coding environments is Bootstrap. It was developed as an open-source JavaScript framework that provides all the tools to quickly develop high-performing, responsive, and mobile-friendly web applications.

4) Mobile app development frameworks
Mobile app development frameworks are groups of software that allow developers to create mobile applications using only one or two programming languages.
With the help of mobile app development frameworks, developers can build native as well as hybrid applications that run on Android, iOS, and Windows mobile platforms.
The best-known framework among mobile app developers is Ionic — a front-end SDK that combines HTML5 and AngularJS to create high-performance, cross-platform mobile apps.
Another good example of a mobile app development framework is Flutter — a complete SDK for building high-quality native Android and iOS apps from a single codebase.

5) Data Visualization
Data visualization, also known as data visualization, is the art of creating clear, readable, and compelling visual representations of data. Data visualization can help you analyze your business data and make it more useful to you.
For example, data visualization can help you compare different types of products with one another. Or tell your users if the changes they have made have been successful.
In order to do this, you must understand how various types of visualizations are useful, such as pie charts and bar charts — two of the most commonly used visualizations in data analysis.