@Calist0 You would like my book on this, it answers all three of your questions: https://gum.co/CSGETMONEY - if you're not a white man you can email me and I'll send it to you for free! Cheers! D
Unfortunately I'm very white!!
Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
21–30 of 62 posts
Re: Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
#22What are your showcase-able skills? Who are you intending to showcase them to? These "junior positions" you'll be applying for - what sort of companies are they with and what sort of work are they likely to ask a new junior FEDev to do? Since you sound like you're just starting to get this portfolio together - and it seems like it's major objective is to land you your first FE Dev role - target it like crazy at the a…
Thanks for the advice!
>What are your showcase-able skills?
I know html, css, js, jquery, and a little bit of php. I know how to make websites responsive. I know how to make AJAX calls (although, I'm a bit rusty). I have some knowledge of design.
>Who are you intending to showcase them to?
I plan on displaying the projects on my portfolio site for recruiters to see.
What exactly do you mean by 'target it like crazy'? Do you mean that I should create a project that relates to the company that I'm applying to?
Using your example.. I could create a vehicle page for the 'Model Y' Tesla car (which hasn't been released yet), and make the design similar to the other model pages.
Re: Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
#23I can only speak from personal experience but here's what worked for me. Build one thing that will truly impress the senior engineers at whatever companies you're applying to. In order to be impressive, it has to solve an interesting engineering problem. Try to build it yourself. Fail (probably). Now go pick up a library that does the hard thing for you. What's great about this is that you're now very familiar with t…
Thanks for the feedback! Do you know of any interesting engineering problems that I can try solving? Perhaps a project like this:
https://haseeb-qureshi.github.io/n-queens-visualizer/ The blogger used it for his own portfolio. It solves the 'N/Eight Queen Problem'. I actually tried doing it myself using JS and I ran into a lot of problems.. My skills may not be that far along yet.
Re: Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
#24You should decide what type of front-end position you're interested to get into; the front-end is now so broad that it's tough to know everything. First, prove you are proficient with the following: http://learn.shayhowe.com/html-css/ http://learn.shayhowe.com/advanced-html-css/ Here's a contest today that can test your skills https://a-k-apart.com Learn javascript and show you know ES5 inside and out. If you already…
Thanks for all the suggestions! Really helpful.
For Github: How could a newbie ever improve the code of someone who's experienced enough to create a library or framework?
Re: Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
#25From a JS perspective, I would be interested to know that you understand how to make requests, parse them into a data structure, and manipulate them DOM. Preferably, one project which demonstrates that you can do this without the help of a framework; another project, that you can.
Alright! I definitely know how to make AJAX calls and manipulate the DOM. I'll make a project showcasing this.
Re: Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
#26FWIW, I'm a hiring manager.
Build ANYTHING. It's mildly more interesting to me if you build something because you were interested in the problem, but if you take the time to learn a framework (or 3) and build something with it, you're proving to me that you are capable of learning and are interested in doing so as opposed to just showing me the projects you worked on in college.
Re: Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
#27What are your showcase-able skills? Who are you intending to showcase them to? These "junior positions" you'll be applying for - what sort of companies are they with and what sort of work are they likely to ask a new junior FEDev to do? Since you sound like you're just starting to get this portfolio together - and it seems like it's major objective is to land you your first FE Dev role - target it like crazy at the a…
Thanks for the advice! >What are your showcase-able skills? I know html, css, js, jquery, and a little bit of php. I know how to make websites responsive. I know how to make AJAX calls (although, I'm a bit rusty). I have some knowledge of design. >Who are you intending to showcase them to? I plan on displaying the projects on my portfolio site for recruiters to see. What exactly do you mean by 'target it like crazy'?…
Exactly - work out who you're sending your resume to and target with laser focus on them, find out what they do, and highlight your ability to do all the junior FE Dev parts of that - don't pretend to be a Creative Director or Marketing Strategist or Head Designer if there are people way more experienced that you easily findable on LinkedIn at the company (or on the other hand, if it's a two person agency or a 7 person startup, try to demonstrate that you can cover those three roles as well as FE Dev). If it's for recruiters, it's a bit harder, but try to do the same thing using currently open job ads as your guide (but as soon as you get a nibble from a recruiter, then find out who the comoany is and follow the rest of the plan).
Make sure your portfolio clearly demonstrates that you can do the sort of stuff you'd need to do for them.
For your counter-example, yeah that's the idea - but don't _just_ make it about "similar design", make sure you can explain how you've used the existing Tesla.com css stylesheet, javascript and jQuery libraries, and that your page uses the same media queries and is mobile friendly and responsive in the same way as the rest of the site.
Re: Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
#28I can only speak from personal experience but here's what worked for me. Build one thing that will truly impress the senior engineers at whatever companies you're applying to. In order to be impressive, it has to solve an interesting engineering problem. Try to build it yourself. Fail (probably). Now go pick up a library that does the hard thing for you. What's great about this is that you're now very familiar with t…
Thanks for the feedback! Do you know of any interesting engineering problems that I can try solving? Perhaps a project like this: https://haseeb-qureshi.github.io/n-queens-visualizer/ The blogger used it for his own portfolio. It solves the 'N/Eight Queen Problem'. I actually tried doing it myself using JS and I ran into a lot of problems.. My skills may not be that far along yet.
I actually tried doing it myself using JS and I ran into a lot of problems..
Excellent. Keep trying until you succeed. In the interest of giving practical advice instead of hand waving, I'll just say that the n-queens link you provided is something that I would expect a good JS developer to build in, say .. a day. You will get there, and it's OK if for now it takes you way longer. "one day" is provided, of course, that I'm not being naive about what the implementation requires. Currently I think it is a collection of JS implementations of algorithms for which the pseudocode can be found on Wikipedia + a simple simulator that runs said algorithms one iteration at a time. (Interesting that the speed can be edited. I guess that rules out setInterval) Let me know if I presumed too much :) Definitely do it for fun, practice, confidence, github, etc... but I wouldn't make it the first thing on a resume unless there's something novel going on there.
Try this: Find a thing and make it faster. Like way faster. Often, there is some operation (F) that is called many times on some type of object (X) and it's possible (perhaps using linear algebra) to improve performance by figuring out a way to express many operations on single items into one operation on many items. I.e. F([X1, X2, X3, ...]) instead of F(X1), then F(X2), then F(X3), ... and so on.
Re: Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
#29I am also just beginning to build my portfolio as a FEDev. I volunteer at a local non-profit and when I found they were having trouble finding an affordable solution so the public could fill out and sign forms digitally, I jumped at the chance to build it. Maybe you can find a way to volunteer and create something that will highlight your skills?
Re: Ask HN: What kind of projects should I build for a front-end portfolio?
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