A few years ago, the Seavus Education and Development Center (SEDC) established a Programming Academy, which teaches the basics and most popular technologies of front-end development. Front-end, also known as client-side development, is what enables users to interact with web applications. It includes all texts, images, input fields, drop-down lists, on-screen buttons, and the like that are displayed when users navigate through web browsers, enabling them to receive information and control applications through data entry. The front-end part of web applications is composed of three layers; that is, three different languages and technologies are used for its creation: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The codes, or instructions, from all three layers are combined and interpreted by browsers. Apart from the basic front-end languages, there are also work frameworks, JavaScript libraries and CSS extensions, which offer a variety of tools and templates compatible with the most common programming languages to make the code (and its writing process) more organized and easier to maintain.      

Software development is constantly undergoing cycles of change and upgrades, especially in the field of front end. In fact, front-end development is changing so rapidly that keeping up with the new trends can be a real challenge. Attending and successfully finishing the Academy can be a stepping stone to a career in the IT industry. Many graduates from the Academy are already working at the software company Seavus.        

We talked with three members of Seavus’ team who got their employment through the Academy: Vukashin Obradovikj - Intermediate Front-End Developer, Olga Penovska - Junior Front-End Developer (Angular and Node), and Natalija Nikolova - Junior Front-End Developer (React and Java).

What is the job of a front-end developer? Can you describe your typical workday?

Vukashin Obradovikj: The work of a front-end developer in Seavus is interesting and quite dynamic, which means I am never bored. I begin my workday by logging in to Seavus’ platform, checking email, and organizing my duties according to the schedule of activities and meetings for the day. Then I start coding following the specific requirements for the current project that have already been agreed on during the planning stage. 

What knowledge and skills should a top front-end developer have today?

Vukashin Obradovikj: A quality front-end developer should be proficient in the HTML, CSS, and Javascript languages and be able to use at least one framework platform, such as Angular or React. Possessing soft skills is also important. Front-end developers should be self-organized and responsible for the projects they’ve been assigned to; they need to be communicative and proactive, give suggestions and ideas for solving problems.    

What are your impressions of the Academy and your employment at Seavus?

Olga Penovska: I consider my enrolling in the Academy the best professional choice I have ever made - and this comes from someone who has made a complete career switch after working as an architect for ten years. The Academy’s syllabus is perfectly designed to guide beginners with no experience whatsoever to becoming full stack web developers, by teaching the latest technologies that are used in the IT industry. The success of the course also had much to do with the lecturers’ commitment, who did their best to train us and give us the necessary knowledge to go on learning independently. Only when the course was over did I realize how much we had learned, and I was truly amazed by the scope of the material. After the Academy, I got an employment at Seavus and joined a team composed of some of the Academy’s best students. We were led by an experienced mentor, who guided us through projects and helped us advance further and step into the industry with confidence.

What projects are you currently working on and what keeps your motivation going?

Olga Penovska: We are currently completing a project called EmployeeBoard. It is a staff management application designed with full stack Javascript and Angular on a front-end and PostgreSQL database. The application is in fact a database of employees that contains relevant information about them, such as the job position they hold in the company and their career advancement. It also provides statistical analysis on this kind of data. What keeps me motivated in Seavus is that it is a domestic as well as an international company working on many different projects and using different technologies. To reach exceptional results, one is usually recommended to choose a specific area of study and master it, however, to be one of the best in the IT industry requires versatility. Here you can make progress only if you keep on upgrading your knowledge in more technologies, and that is best achieved by working on as many different projects for domestic and international clients.      

Tell us more about yourself. What was the Academy’s impact on your further professional development and what is it like to be working at Seavus?

Natalija Nikolova: As a hardworking person, I try to give my best in everything I do. During my studies at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, I encountered programming in several subjects and was immediately drawn by it, so enrolling in the Web Programming Academy was a logical step for me to upgrade my knowledge.   

With the help of the exceptional lecturers and assistants at the Academy, and with hard work, I was able to gain sound knowledge to help me become an Intermediate Front-End Developer at Seavus. It is an honor and pleasure to be working with amazing colleagues, who are willing to pass their knowledge to others. The positive energy in the team gives me additional motivation to do my best and advance further. Seavus is a company where I feel valued and motivated.  

Which front-end trends would you like to see this year?

Natalija Nikolova: Nowadays, people use many different devices, which makes our job at providing a good user experience that much more challenging. To improve users’ experience, that is, the speed and performance of applications, new technologies are constantly introduced and developed.    

The 2022 trends include the concepts of SPA (Single Page Applications), PWA – Progressive Web Apps, Micro Frontend Architecture, and Headless Architecture. As for JavaScript, we can say that its popularity is still on the rise.  

From these trends I would single out the Micro Frontend Architecture as the most interesting. This approach divides a project into several “micro applications,” allowing several teams of developers to work on them. In other words, with a micro frontend, developers of different expertise can work together on a single project, which is especially useful when there is a need for combining several technologies. Additional benefits include faster development pace, fewer problems with deployment, diversity in framework preference and improved scalability. There are some drawbacks as well, such as more complex testing and configuration management, but I still think the Micro Frontend Architecture will persist and evolve in the future.