5 Reasons why a JavaScript developer should build projects to level up your JavaScript skills

Are you a JavaScript developer who wants to level up your JavaScript skills? Then you are in the right place.

The missing piece to leveling up your JavaScript skills

There are many resources to learn JavaScript skills, from tutorials, books, courses, and technical documentations. But reading and watching those resources are not enough to level up your JavaScript skills. Those resources are important for the beginning, but to advance it, you need practice. Practice needs a space, a room, or a place. The place that you are free to do practice every day, every week, every month, or whatever time it is. The place that you are free to do any experiments. That place is your own project.

Tutorials, books, courses, and technical documentations are important, but there is another important thing that is practice.

Before we jump in, let's talk about JavaScript first.

Why level up your JavaScript skills?

In the Stack Overflow Annual Developer Survey from 2016 to 2022, JavaScript was still in the top 5 most favorite programming languages and the top 5 most loved by developers. JavaScript is the only popular programming language that is run in the browsers. It is not only run in the browsers as the clients’ side but also as the backend with Node, Deno, and Bun runtime. JavaScript remains one of the top programming languages, and by learning it, we can become full-stack web developers (backend and frontend).

The demand and popularity of JavaScript make it the best option, and by focusing on mastering JavaScript, you become a full-stack web developer (backend and frontend).

I build a project and discovered many experiences that pushed me to level up my JavaScript skills.

As a JavaScript developer back then, I read and watched so many hours of tutorials, courses, books, and technical documentations about JavaScript. But I feel the knowledge I got from them is not growing. I feel stuck. The knowledge that I got from them is not going anywhere. Not because of all those resources that make me stuck at growing my JavaScript skills. It's because of my lack of practice. At my full-time job at a startup company, there is not much opportunity to level up my JavaScript skills because most of the things I work on are repeatable problems, and the company is using an old version of the framework (I am still ok with it as long as it’s not deprecated). That's why I decided to go explore new experiences to level up my JavaScript skills through building my own projects.

Lack of practice makes me stuck on leveling up my JavaScript skills. Building my own projects pushes me to level up my JavaScript skills because of the new opportunities to gain experience.

The reasons are always pushing me to level up my JavaScript skills through building projects

In this topic, I am going to explain my reasons why building projects can level up my JavaScript skills. I am hoping you can feel ready to start building your projects and leveling up your JavaScript skills right now, even if you have not finished reading this topic.

Let's begin.

Reason #1: Make a space for practice

Building a new project will give you a space to practice.

Practices can be tedious at times, but according to James Clear's book Atomic Habits, you can eliminate boredom by doing something small to make it more enjoyable, easier, and more likely to make you love it and push you to do it consistently. No matter how minor the changes you made to your project were, they were a first step toward sharpening your skills. If you're stuck on what changes do you need to make? Here are my tips. If you already built a project you got from the tutorials or you built it on your own, then go ahead and practice by adding some small features to it, like a button that can change the background color based on day or night, adding some sorting data, adding a filter, and many more.

Keep adding some changes for practice to build a habit and slowly level up your JavaScript skills.

Warning: Don't practice too much or you will hate it.

Don’t do it too much. Practicing too much will make you burn out, and slowly you will hate doing it. If you burn out, stop practicing and try walking around for a while to refresh your mind. When you feel refreshed and want to start again, try reading some motivational blogs first like this blog. Sometimes it will make you engaged again to continue building a project. Practicing with small changes consistently makes you less burned out and levels up your JavaScript skills exponentially.

Practicing too much is not good for you. Instead, try doing a tiny bit of it and enjoy the process. You will love to level up your JavaScript skills.

Reason #2: The places to discover new experiences

Whatever JavaScript projects you build, an app, browser extensions, libraries, API, template UI, app scripts, and more, you will find new problems that need to be solved. This will lead you to new experiences for leveling up your JavaScript skills. If you have not found any new problems, then it’s time to build more advanced projects.

You will have new problems when you build a project. Use that as your opportunity to level up your problem-solving skills.

Those problems you solved are important for the future of your projects. For example, when you face the same problem again, it will become easier. It gets easier or you get more advanced solving methods when you face it continuously.

Stuck on a problem? Stop forcing yourself to solve it. Take a breath and read some meme.

If you are stuck on a problem you face, don’t force yourself to solve it. I have experienced this before. Forcing ourselves to solve problems that are difficult for us is a bad thing. You are becoming less mindful and, in some cases, your solution becomes a new problem. Try refreshing your mind for a while by walking around, taking a wash, stretching, or quick exercise. When you feel refreshed, take a look at your problems on stack overflow. Read it in detail to get a deep understanding of the solution. Don’t just copy and paste. Remember, this is your personal project, no need to rush. Your main goal is to learn not to finish it.

There is no need to force yourself to solve a problem quickly. Sometimes we need to refresh our minds. The goal is to learn not to finish it quickly.

Reason #3: The sandbox tools to try any tech stack

The most common issues that a JavaScript developer faces in an organization are a lack of new technology to experiment with. As a JavaScript developer, it makes it difficult to level up your skills. With your own projects, you can do whatever tech stacks you want to try. If you want to learn about new JavaScript stacks, try them while building a project. Instead of just reading the readme or technical documentations, you can feel and learn what problems those stacks want to solve and what advantages and disadvantages they have with trying.

By experimenting with any interesting tech stacks, you can overcome your limitation in terms of leveling up your JavaScript skills.

Sharpen your skills in choosing the right tech stack.

Choosing the right tech stack is a hard decision. You must have experience with a variety of stacks to understand the benefits and drawbacks of each. Within projects, you can practice to gain this experience. You can feel it when you start building new projects or add on existing projects. The way you seek the right tech stacks is by progressing to level up your JavaScript skills. Should I use Deno or Node for the backend? Should I use React or Vue for the frontend? Whatever tech stack you choose, if you have never used it before, try it at least once in a quick start. For your projects, you don’t need to worry if it's the right stacks or not. Just try the stack you want to add. While you walk along with it, at the end you will realize whether the stack you used fit or not. Those practices lead you to get a wider knowledge of the tech stack. The next projects you build, you will get better and better at choosing the right tech stack.

Exploring any tech stack is the way you to level up your skills and get wider knowledge of the tech stack.

Reason #4: Becoming your creativity booster

As I mentioned before, the common problems in an organization are lack of choice and trying. I think this limits our creative room. You have limited your interesting ideas and limited your experimental things. That's why you need your own projects. The projects you can do it anything in it. The projects you can add any tutorial in it. The projects you can add any weird experiment in it. Anything you can do without limitation. Don't worry too much if your projects become Frankenstein, Franky, AWS, or something like that. The goal is to level up your JavaScript skills through creativity. Here we eliminate the obstacles to boosting your creativity. Free-do anything ideas in a project. It is part of practicing your creativity. Creativity will help you in the future. You can solve a problem in an effective way because of your creativity skills.

Don't limit yourself to being creative. Doing whatever you want is a part of practicing your creativity skills.

Reason #5: Becoming the history of your learning journey

The common problems of projects that are not updated or not maintained Even though there are so many experiences we can get from them. If you join a new organization, these skills are usually needed. Commonly, you face this problem with an old and unmaintained project. Whatever your projects are, there are already solved problems out there, or the tech stacks are too old. Maintaining it will teach you new skills such as refactoring, updating dependencies, changing deprecated dependencies, and more. There are many problems that need to be solved, and worthwhile experience will come from maintaining projects.

In the end your projects become your proof of your journey leveling up your JavaScript skills.

However you feel your old projects are bad, it is still proof that your skills are improving. Don't delete it. Give it a small maintenance to make it equal to your skills now.

Conclusion

Projects are important for a JavaScript developer because they allow you to practice problem solving, experiment with different tech stacks, be creative, and showcase your work. Those practices are needed to level up your JavaScript skills. Practicing with small things consistently will lead you to become mindful and enjoy them. You don't know it until you try it. Start building your own projects now and level up your JavaScript skills.