Why Should I Care About Front-End Web Development?
Data scientists and front-end web developers are different breeds. The front-end web developer is motivated by creating beautiful and user-friendly designs. On the other hand, the data scientist loves to turn raw data into actionable insights. On the surface, these topics look disconnected.
If you are working in Data Science (or dream of working in data science), then you might ask yourself:
Why should I learn anything about front-end development? Isn’t that like colours and stuff?
Firstly, shame on you for thinking that front-end web development is simply "colours and stuff" 😉
Let me give you three good reasons for learning front-end web development as a data scientist:
- You will benefit from having a personal webpage that showcases your projects and skills as a data scientist. Those who hire data scientists are typically not data scientists themselves. Thus they can not understand the details of your work. They have to rely on how you present your work. A well-polished personal webpage is like giving a confident handshake at the start of an interview; it sets high expectations.
- Knowing good principles of Design such as typography, whitespace, and visual hierarchy is useful. Have to present your results to upper management? You will instinctively create more beautiful graphs with Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Tableau. You will even see your PowerPoint presentations go up a notch. Not because you are suddenly better at PowerPoint, but because you unconsciously think about design. It is often these simple things that grab the attention of decision-makers. And let’s be honest: Even fellow data scientists don’t mind looking at gorgeous presentations!
- In many businesses, data scientists have to sometimes collaborate with web developers. Knowing the basics of front-end web development can make the collaboration a lot smoother. Even better, it can leave a great impression on the web developers you collaborate with. Like gossip, great impressions have a way of spreading like a wildfire in small and medium-sized companies.
Why Can’t I Just Use a Premade Template For My Personal Webpage?
You can. I even encourage this. There are many sites where you can buy such templates. There are even some free templates (requires attribution) like HTML5 UP that look amazing.
However, you ALWAYS have to modify them in some way. Maybe your bio text is too long for the template, so you have to increase the margin. Maybe your pictures are not high enough resolution, so you have to decrease their size and move them to the right. Maybe you want to try out another colour theme?
Without knowing what you are doing, trying to modify the code is a time-consuming nightmare. Learn some front-end web development first. Afterwards, you can effortlessly make websites that make you stand out as a data scientist.
I Don’t Have Time to Learn a Whole New Trade!
There are a few people who are talented in both web development and data science. I like to call them unicorns; most people have heard of them, but very few have seen them in real life.
I work primarily with data science and I’ll be the first to admit: I’m no expert web developer. I would be beaten to a pulp if challenged by an actual front-end web developer in any front-end framework. It would be a massacre 😧
Why am I telling you this? Because only knowing a fraction of front-end web development can make you stand out a lot as a data scientist!
Honestly, you don’t need to compete with Shannon, who has been a professional front-end web developer for seven years. In reality, you need to compete with Bob. Who is Bob?
- Bob is a fellow data scientist who loves medieval fonts.
- Bob thinks that a colour palette of 15 starkly different colours looks "epic".
- Bob sees no reason to care about design because it’s the data that matters.
Bob is correct in that the data matters. Yet, it’s naive to think that the presentation of the data is irrelevant. This is like dressing in sweatpants and a hoodie at a job interview because it’s not the clothes that matter. Although technically correct, there is such as thing called first impressions.
Where Should You Start?
To learn front-end web development, there are tons of different resources:
- If you like video-based courses, then Colt Steele’s The Web Developer Bootcamp 2021 or Angela Yu’s The Complete 2021 Web Development Bootcamp are both highly recommended by many.
- If you like written tutorials, then the MDN Web Docs are free and of high quality. For printed books, I recommend Jon Duckett’s Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set.
- If you like interactive courses, then Scrimba’s The Frontend Developer Career Path is a good choice.
For making a data scientist Portfolio webpage, I recommend getting familiar with:
- 1 – Basic HTML
- 2 – Basic CSS
- 3 – General Design Principles
- 4 – Responsive Design
- 5 – Deployment with Github Pages
Who Knows, You Might Even Love It!
As with data science, one learns the most by building projects. Try to build a portfolio webpage for your data science career as soon as possible. It will look amateurish at first, but don’t despair. Your skills will quickly grow and you will be making awesome websites in no time!
One of the things I love about web development is that you can quickly see the result of your code. When dealing with data pipelines, there can be months of work ahead before you see the fruits of your labour. Not in front-end web development!
Designing a button a user can click on to view your data scientist bio? You can test it right away yourself! Creating a slick design for your personal projects page? Check it out immediately to see if you like it. You get the picture.
So what are you waiting for? Learn some front-end development to enhance your career as a data scientist!
Like my writing? Check out my other posts like Type Hints, Formatting with Black, Underscores in Python, and 5 Dictionary Tips for more content. If you are interested in data science, programming, or anything in between, then feel free to add me on LinkedIn and say hi ✋
