Divotee Ruben van den Hoek

At Divotion, we like to say front-end development knows few secrets for our developers. And we’re passionate about new technologies and making the best possible solutions for our clients.

What better way to demonstrate these claims by interviewing our developers about their views on what’s new in front-end development. In this article, Ruben shares his thoughts on building component libraries, micro front-ends in React and TypeScript.

What was the focus of your last assignment?

“At my last assignment, I was tasked with developing a component library using Vue and TypeScript, hosted in Azure DevOps. There wasn’t a lot of front-end knowledge within the development team, so by developing a component library, back-end developers are able to set up applications from scratch without having to rely on front-end developers too much. 

One big advantage of setting up component libraries is that developer teams are able to set up working applications within a day, even back-end developers with little front-end knowledge. Components are building blocks with the right styling and functionality that allow back-end developers to easily build a front-end without having to know precisely how they work. They simply need to feed them the right data.”

Do you see any trends within front-end development coming up?

“Definitely! I see micro front-ends are gaining traction and I’m learning more about it myself. Micro front-ends are really just mini applications that you can deploy anywhere, regardless of which framework you’re using. They can be used as full-fledged applications. I’m learning to write these in React, so that I can write standalone code that can make an app lightweight and independent. This gives different teams the ability to work on the same app at the same time, without having to think about how this will impact other developers’ work. Another advantage is that features that are finished can be left alone, which makes it less frustrating when developers in a team come and go. 

Another thing that I see is becoming bigger and bigger in front-end development is the use of TypeScript. This language is starting to prevail over JavaScript. TypeScript gives you a lot more control during development, showing you explicitly if what you are doing is right. This means you’ll be able to discover errors much earlier, saving time and effort seeking out why and where errors are caused. Ultimately, this results in fewer errors in production because TypeScript has prevented them by guiding the developer before they even happen. This significantly improves the developer experience.” 

Would you like to add Ruben or one of our other front-end developers to your team? Check out https://divotion.com/divoted or contact Juliëtte at 06 - 42078127 or info@divotion.com