 What's up everyone? Let me go ahead and make sure this is situated the right way. What's up everyone? Jossi here, and in today's video, I wanna talk about why I chose to become a front-end developer. So when I was a computer science student, I thought it was interesting, I thought programming was cool, and it kinda distracts you with all the different electives, so like chemistry and calculus. So, you know, in the beginning of your curriculum or beginning of your computer science, like major, you'll take some programming courses, but depending on what path you would like to take, sometimes you may end up with more like gen-eds and electives in the beginning part opposed to like a lot of programming courses. Needless to say, as I continued and progressed through my major, I started realizing that I really didn't care for programming that much and sometimes found it like mundane and boring and always programming in the terminal and doing back-end stuff. I didn't realize it was back-end type of programming. I mean, of course, data structures and algorithms don't really have any visual user interface applied to that kind of programming, but at the time, I didn't even know what front-end was. I think one shoulder's higher than the other because I got this monitor, so my clothes don't look crazy and I'm not looking crazy and I'm still looking crazy. I remember when I started my first internship and I didn't really think I wanted to pursue computer science anymore because of all those things that I mentioned, I found it boring and difficult and I just didn't know what I wanted to do, to be honest with you. I was 19 years old at the time, who does? But during that internship, I got exposed to software development from a full-stack standpoint. So since I didn't have a ton of functional programming skillsets, my job was to focus on the front-end. It sounds so funny to think about front-end, desktop application. You never really see that in a job title or responsibility section, but that's when I got exposed to front-end and building responsive view eyes. And that summer totally changed my outlook on software development. I really didn't even know a ton about software development. It opened up my eyes to this new world of programming because when you're a computer science major in the beginning, obviously you have YouTube videos and you can watch people like myself and learn about software development, but at that time I didn't do any of that kind of stuff. So all I knew was like C++ and for loops and data structures and algorithms, kind of computation with those big sun computers and all this stuff that I just didn't like. But as an intern, I got exposed to, you know, building out business applications, which is totally different from what you do as a comp-side major. Before we continue, I wanna take a moment to thank the sponsor of this video, Policy Genius. 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What's great about that is because you can get unbiased advice from Policy Genius experts. Visit policygenius.com slash jocelynj to shop the market and start saving today. So fast forward to my second internship. I did more full stack development and more functional programming because I wanted to really get good at those skill sets even though I still love the idea of designing things and turning that design to code. And that's where the love for front end development started. And I think a lot of my fellow front end software engineers and developers can attest to a similar experience. Maybe they were a comp side major and enjoy design and thought like just doing back in and full stack was kind of boring. Or maybe they had a design background and wanted to become more technical. My third internship was actually web development focus. And the interns on my team were software engineering majors. So they had a lot of like front end development experience and like design. And that's when I really got passionate about this. This whole thing. And I started doing freelance work with web development and started using bootstrap and CSS grid layout and all these things to make user interfaces responsible. Responsive, responsible. So what's important about this whole story of being a front end developer is that I actually had to learn what I don't like first. Sometimes we get so caught up in getting that dream job in the beginning, which is good. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. But those jobs that you do in the beginning that you don't necessarily like as much will actually make it easier for you to figure out what you're actually passionate about and can see yourself doing. Like when I was a full stack developer, I did anything and everything that I could to focus on front end. Now, don't get me wrong. I did like full stack development. There were aspects of it that I enjoyed. Like when you have a feature that needs to be built and you actually see it working and you see it working from like the API layer all the way up to the view. That's such a great feeling. I also kind of got annoyed with the fact that some sprints and even quarters, we will be totally focused on like API development, back end development, basically a bunch of stuff that weren't front end focus. And that was frustrating, especially as you want to progress in your career, you want to specialize at some point in time, whether it's like, you know, mobile development as an iOS dev or Android dev, back end dev. You know, you could do full stack or front end. Now working as a front end developer, I'm really grateful to have, you know, this opportunity that was literally the best decision I could have made was that jump from full stack development to front end. So if you find yourself in a similar situation, don't wait like why continue to give yourself a headache doing work that you don't enjoy. So I noticed that I got a lot better at like CSS, which is cool. And CSS seems like it's this never-ending programming language. There's so many things that I'm always learning. And to be 100% honest with you as a com side grad and a full stack, you know, or previously being a full stack developer, you don't have the same level of respect for CSS that you do for like Java, you know, C sharp, JavaScript. I don't know when that'll ever change, but I will tell you when you can take any design and turn it into something that's responsive and accessible, that's golden. I know I've been really positive about front end development and I've been like sipping that Kool-Aid. Everything isn't perfect. I mean, I will say that sometimes I get tired of styling things, especially as someone who doesn't have a design background. Sometimes I'm like, I don't understand why this matters. Or why this has to be so perfect. Like really who cares? Which is funny because people who don't care about front end development feel that way, but in a totally different extreme. That's the only thing that sometimes is a headache is fighting with CSS. I also do like flexing my full stack development skill sets or computer science skill sets that I learn, especially being so early in my career. And I do get a chance to flex those skill sets every so often, so that does help. I definitely don't see myself as someone who's just doing CSS and semantic HTML all the time. So yeah, that concludes this video. Once again, thank you to Policy Genius for sponsoring this video. I hope this video was helpful to any of you all who are interested in programming, especially those of you all who are in school for computer science, software development, something IT related. Those of you all who are in boot camps, those of you all who are self-taught and wanna make a career change, good luck to you all. Front end development is amazing and I don't see it going anywhere. There are some lines being blurred though between full stack and front end for sure, especially as JavaScript frameworks become more and more of the norm. But yeah, with all that being said, thank you all for watching this video. Be sure to give this video a thumbs up. Comment down below your favorite programming language. I like to interact with you all and see some of the things you all are working on your favorite programming languages and projects that you've worked on. And as always, have a blessed rest of your week. Oh, don't forget to subscribe of course and become a part of this amazing community. And as always, have a blessed rest of your week. I said that twice, I'll see you all soon. Peace.