10 Most Common Mistakes Web Developers Make

Web development is a huge field where you can learn non-stop. The more you learn, the more mistakes you make, whether you are a newbie or a long-time professional.

To help you avoid some common fails, we’re going to list below some of the main ones, and help you to avoid them in a practical way.
 
1. Missing semi-colone 

This is one of the most common mistakes that even experienced developers make. They simply forget to end the statement with a semicolon. 

How to avoid: Practice putting a semicolon before you start writing the code. It’ll help you get used to it and finally make a habit.
 
2. Wrong or missing SEO 

Many developers are misinformed about technical SEO and they may think they know good SEO while claiming that it’s not complex at all. That’s not true - SEO requires certain knowledge and mastery. Also, some specialists even completely forget about the activity and completely postpone it. 

SEO is not just related to setting good content, tags, keywords, meta-data, image alt tags, site maps, etc. It also includes eliminating duplicate content, having crawlable site architecture, efficient load times, intelligent backlinking, etc. 

How to avoid: That’s why it’s important to prioritize thinking about SEO at the beginning of starting the website application. Make sure all the pages have tags, content, metadata, site map, and all that jazz.
 
3. Building a non-responsive design 

A lot of users open the website on different devices: laptops, phones, tablets, etc. If the website is hard to use on any of them, it definitely affects a decrease in the user count. Keep in mind that each website should be of any screen size and multi-device support. 

How to avoid: You can build responsive website designs, using media query. There are many practices for responsive web development which certain tips, however, there is some platform-independent framework. The most popular is probably Twitter Bootstrap. It is an open-source and free HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework that has been adopted by every major development platform. Take a look and use the Bootstrap patterns and practices when building your application, and you will get a responsive web application with no trouble at all.
 
4. Not maintaining a consistent writing style

Every developer has their own style of coding, depending on their experience. Maintaining a consistent writing style will help you to orientate while facing an issue. It’s a must to troubleshoot an issue, otherwise, you’ll just get stuck on it, if you need to locate the same issue, for example. 

How to avoid: When writing code, make sure everything is well-structured, clear to others, has proper sections, and necessary comments where needed.

5. Incomplete input validation 

“Don’t trust user input” is what we all have heard; however, we also may know that mistakes coming from user validation happen quite often. One of the most common consequences of this mistake is SQL Injection. 

How to avoid: Implementing validation is tiring and not a short process, but it must be part of your standard coding and never otherwise.  
 
6. Not ready to scale 

Constant time pressure frequently makes even very good development teams overlook some issues. Scaling, like SEO, is sometimes taken for granted by developers. To have the MVP (minimum viable product) out in production asap is a goal for many companies, and it’s a good experience, but it also stems many problems later. 

However much we want but selecting a scalable database and web server, and separating all application layers on independent scalable servers is not all. There are many details you need to think about if you wish to avoid rewriting significant parts of your application later. 

How to avoid: At the beginning plan all the details to simplify the process for later. Elaborate the essentials. The sooner, the better.
 
7. “It works in my browser”… 

Sometimes a developer may have a browser bias and test the web pages with that one particularly. Another reason is that some code samples found online may be written without factoring in how they would render in other browsers. Also, certain browsers have different default values for styles. 

Writing a browser-centric site results in poor quality when displayed in other browsers. 

How to avoid: It’s not practical to test web pages in every browser & version during development. However, having a regular interval of checking how your site will appear in multiple browsers is a good approach. Today, we are provided with many free tools to help. They are readily available regardless of your preferred platform. A tool like Visual Studio can, for instance, invoke multiple browsers to display a single page you are working on. 
 
8. Bloated responses 

How this becomes a mistake? Your web is full of high-quality images/graphics. The CSS and JavaScript file links also take much storage, plus the source HTML markup may be unnecessarily complex. These lead to slow processing, which will certainly displease the users. 

How to avoid: Try using minimalistic programming techniques/tools. Careful refactoring will also help to modify the source code program while still keeping the functionality as it is.

9. Showing that you know everything

When people hear the word “Developer” they think you are a magician and know everything in this world. Maybe that’s why some developers are scared to admit that they don’t know how to handle a certain task. However, that’s not a reason to deceive people.

How to avoid: Simply tell the person that you don’t have the answer ATM, and you will get back to them with a solution when ready. No one is going to blame you for not knowing everything in this world.

10. Refusing help when trapped

Another similar mistake is not admitting that you need some help. If you ask for a help when you are stuck at some point, you will not become less skillful. Also, it’s important to keep in mind that we learn from the mistakes, and secondly, we learn from each other.

How to avoid: Again, a very simple answer - ask for a help when you need it. Don’t put pressure on yourself and struggle when you can just get the answer from someone who knows it. Also, in such situations people see and value your desire to learn more and improve your skills.