"So, what's your role?"
Job titles. Everyone has one, probably self-assigned or made up by your company or by some weird manager who stays up at night making them up.
When I began professionally in 2001 and you were a Front End Developer, you made the HTML and CSS and added some DHTML in the form of some Javascript you found on Dynamic Drive. Old school template building really.
Nowadays, the Front End territory has become bigger and bigger with mobile (web) apps coming in and frameworks like Angular, React (which isn’t a framework, ask Jake Archibald) and hundreds of others making Back End Developer obsolete.
What began as a job to make the web pretty with layouts and fonts and colors now has become more complex with MVC constructions in Javascript, AJAX/JSON calls and more of those things I tend to stay away from.
I feel that the title of Front End Developer has become too generic in a way, because of the broadness of the field.
So, I thought about it for a bit and I reckon you could roughly split the Front End Developer into three types:
The Front End Designer The HTML and CSS specialist. Wants to make pretty stuff (yet useful, mind you). Has knowledge of accessibility and progressive enhancement and has intermediate understanding of Javascript in the form of jQuery. Might be a template maker for a CMS.
The Front End Developer The one in the middle, the “full stack Front End Developer”. Jack of all trades, master of none.
The Front End Engineer The hardcore Javascript programmer, usually framework based, but there might be vanilla coders out there (respect to those!). Knows HTML and CSS, but might not make the prettiest and smartest code you’ve seen.
I know, I know, there are a lot more shades of grey here. Heck, I completely design a website in HTML and CSS (handcoded!) from scratch, so I’m a web designer who codes.
Front End Development is evolving and maturing and a proper job title might make it more clear where someone’s strengths and skills lie. Don't get me started on recruiters who want to talk to you about a Front End position which doesn't suit you at all...
So what do you all think? Because that is what I want to know! :)
p.s. this is the first story I ever wrote, so be gentle! ;)