A lot of aspiring junior or medior React (frontend) developers struggle with their progress. I feel for you, brothers. You’re stuck in constant release cycles—new tasks, new sprints, new epics—every day something new, without any opportunity to truly develop your skills. It’s like overtraining at the gym. Your mind needs to calm down so you can gather your thoughts and reflect deeply—just like your muscles need rest. I was in the same limbo, so here’s my “roadmap” of things you need to learn to break out of it.

You Need to Think Ahead

Recently, a colleague told me I was doing premature abstraction. I disagreed. When working on a project that will last months or years, I’ve never regretted abstracting too soon, but I’ve often found myself thinking, “I should have abstracted this earlier, now we need to refactor.” How does this relate to thinking ahead? Well, you don’t know how a project will grow. It’s a living thing. The client changes, their requests change, plans evolve. YouTube was originally a “video dating app,” and now it’s a “bad AI-generated content app.” You never know what’s coming next.

Plan for Internationalization

If the app is business-related, always plan for internationalization. I18n is a lifesaver. I can’t tell you how many times a client has expanded beyond their original market. Everyone likes money, and the bigger the market, the bigger the profits. If a client is currently operating in one region—trust me—if the project is successful, they will expand, and you will need internationalization.

Carefully Craft Folder Structure

Oh, I’m a stickler for this. You need to craft your folder structure carefully. It’s all fun and games when there are 15 components and 5 pages, but when it starts to expand, it can explode.
Here are a few tips from my experience with folder structure: always group things that work together in the same folder. For example, put the component, its logic, and its styling in the same folder with a proper naming scheme. Don’t nest things too deeply. I consider myself a “never nester,” and that applies to both code and file structure. Three levels deep is the max; if you’re going deeper than that, something’s wrong.

Think About Nomenclature

Naming things is the most difficult and important part of software development. Proper naming helps clarify what a function or object does and how it should be used. Here are some tips: follow naming patterns. If something follows the provider pattern, name it somethingProvider. If it follows the singleton pattern, call it somethingSingleton. This way, other developers will know what they’re dealing with.

Performance is Important, But Premature Optimization is Bad

When it comes to React, you typically trade off between processing power and memory. useCallback and useMemo can save processing power by reserving memory. In most cases, your client’s device will have more processing power than available memory. So, if you want to optimize for speed, it’s better to use memory—but be careful not to use too much.

Be Gentle on Web Servers (So DevOps Will Love You)

One common mistake I’ve seen frontend developers make is unnecessary server calls. Every single call to the server costs money—a lot of it. If one function requires three server calls but can be done in one, optimize it to save money. Also, caching is extremely important. It’s better to store certain things in memory (e.g., using react-query) than to over-rely on server calls. This is even more important than using useCallback.

You Don’t Have to Know Design, But You Have to Think About UX

Now, honestly, I’m not that good at design. I don’t know why. But when it comes to UX, I think about everything. For example, the client should always know what’s happening in the app. If you’re fetching data, show a notification or a loader. If a request fails, let them know. If something breaks, use error boundaries so the client can contact you and report the issue.

Conclusion

These are some things senior frontend developers should always keep in mind. Try applying them to your next project, task, or sprint. If management is pushing for deadlines, explain that these considerations will improve the project in the long run. You can even mention these points to clients. For example, saying something like, “Sir/Ma’am, I think your app will grow, and we’ll need internationalization for different languages. Could I have some extra time at the start to save us headaches later?” This shows you’re thinking about their success, and they’ll appreciate it. Stay strong, brogrammers (that includes female brogrammers as well).