Hey there!

I'm back at it again: Welcome to today's edition of the Top 3 in Tech newsletter! Today I've got some advice on dealing with imposter syndrome, as well as some resources to level up your front-end game.

Should take less than 4 minutes to read - let's go:

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1. Dealing with imposter syndrome

Imposter syndrome is, unfortunately, very rampant in the development world. I'd wager most developers have felt it in some way at one point or another. But just so we're all on the same page, this is the official Wikipedia definition:

Basically imposter syndrome is this nagging feeling of not being "good enough" - and that at any point our boss/coworker/client will figure that out and we'll get scolded or, in the worst case, fired.

It's an especially big problem among developers because coding is actually very difficult. There's always a million ways to tackle any given problem. New frameworks and libraries we need to know. And even something as tiny as a semicolon error can be enough to take down an entire application.

This fear alone can be enough for some to not even pursue their dream of becoming a programmer - and that's a huge shame.

So here's my top 3 favourite tips to help you deal with imposter syndrome:

1. Realize that almost every developer goes through this. For me it helps to know that I'm not alone in this feeling. And if other, more experienced developers experience imposter syndrome, but still manage to do great work, then I can do it too.
2. Look back at your progress. When you've been coding for a while, comparing your past work to your most recent is a great way to see how far you've come. That alone can verify that you're at least moving in the right direction and improving over time, and that you're already better today than you were 6 months ago.
3. Remember that you're never done learning to code. Stop seeing programming as something you either "know" or "don't know". Start approaching every challenge as just a minor gap in your knowledge caused by a lack of experience. When you think this way, the obvious progression from imposter syndrome is not that you're stupid or not cut out to be a developer - it's that you just need more experience to cover your gaps. Which will come naturally just from being a developer.

I hope you can use these tips to deal with your own imposter syndrome, regardless if you're a new or more senior developer.

I could talk about this subject for hours, but I'll end with a quick observation for now:

The fact that you're currently reading this newsletter tells me you're not an imposter.

You know what the real imposters are doing?

Nothing.

They're not reading articles or signing up for newsletters or working on side projects.

You'll be fine.

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2. Interactive typography tutorial

One of the hardest things for me when I started as a front-end developer was making text look great. There's lots of knowledge and little "gotchas" when working with typography that can be quite hard to learn.

Que: This weeks amazing resource!

In this quick, interactive tutorial you'll learn the basics of typography: picking great fonts, using proper font sizes, the importance of lineheight etc. It's a nice and fun exercise to get you started with typography and making your text look so much better AND be more accessible. Definitely recommend checking it out (only takes 5 minutes):

​Level up your typography game​

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3. New Netlify website breakdown

Now that we're on the topic of creating better websites, I thought this Twitch video by Alex Trost would be interesting to y'all.

In case you haven't head of Netlify, it's one of the best and fastest ways to host your websites. It started out as a static site host, but has since evolved to include tons of awesome features for developers that just want an easy way to get their projects online.

They recently re-launched their brand new website showing off all the cool features and ways to use Netlify - and the landing page itself is a work of art. So in this video, Alex sits down with the Netlify team and walks through how they built this gorgeous looking website so the rest of us can learn and do the same 🔥

​Check out the VoD on Twitch​

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That's it for this week! Did you enjoy today's newsletter?

​👍 Yes, it was amazing!​

​😐 Eh, I guess it was ok​

​👎 Not really at all​

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I would really appreciate if you would share the newsletter with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, by email or copy/paste the link mads.fyi/top3 on other platforms. It really helps to keep me motivated and let the newsletter grow. See you in 2 weeks ✌

— Mads Brodt