4 Mistakes to avoid while building a front-end application from scratch

4 of the basic mistakes that can be avoided to make a large-scale frontend application.

Building any large-scale application is an incremental process it takes hundreds of hours of research and development. But this process can be very messy and complicated, If we do not lay down some basic ground rules and try to speed up the process by using some workaround or untrusted solutions.

Here are some of the basic things one should consider at the start of building an application. As a front-end developer, I face the following problems in the long run that took me hours of extra effort and resources.

1. Not choosing the best suitable framework/library.

There are plenty of libraries and frameworks available on the web to choose from, many of the time it is a straightforward process but some of the time it takes you ages(kidding 🤪) to choose the best suitable library or framework.

But this is an important step from the process that worth spending time on. I personally have a bad experience with frameworks/libraries, choosing the best frameworks/libraries can improve your application performance, can save you tons of amount of time, and more importantly can be very helpful to improve(upgrade) your application.

2. Not spending time on project structure.

This one is really important because as you go into the development and your project starts to grow in terms of the number of files and folders and it could get very confusing to understand what should be kept where? especially for a new member of the team then again you need to spend time, advocating about how things should be kept in the project.

Laying out some common ground about what goes where can save a lot of time and rework. I prefer keeping this information in the project itself, so it comes in handy at the time of development.

3. Using 3rd party dependency excessively.

When there is a new project there are deadlines, and it is human nature to look for shortcuts and these shortcuts can cost you in the future. I have seen in many projects devs using 3rd party dependency excessively and not fully understanding the use of the one that you already have.

I have encountered the use of external dependency for the easiest tasks that can be written with a couple of lines of code, see the problem here is when you add a dependency in a project that dependency comes with another dependency and that one with another, this creates a web of dependency that can be very difficult to maintain. This then requires the rework of the project to upgrade the project

4. Not doing peer review due to deadlines.

Reviewing each other work always leads to a stronger code base, which indeed helpful for any project’s future development. Each individual has a different perspective about things, we can just utilize this virtue to improve the project.

I understand doing line by line review for each of the development can not be possible sometimes but if at least keep the practice of it so it will become a habit in a log run which will save you from the setback that you may face by writing bad code.

These are some of the loopholes that you can avoid to make your project better and maintainable in the long run. Do comment on more mistakes that should be avoided to make a good application.

Originally published at https://adarsh-thakur.hashnode.dev.