How to Become a Web Developer
Web Development is a continuously changing and evolving topic and one of the most demanded skills these days with the welcome of the digital age.
It’s a really good time investment and it can open doors to other digital areas as well, such as Mobile Development.
The best part is that you can do it from your home with your laptop, no computer science degree needed, no previous experience needed.
You can find Web Development in almost every field you can think of, Business, Real State, Laws, Shops, Car companies, Tech companies, etc. There is an unlimited number of applications, the demand for Web Developers keeps just increasing as the world becomes more digitalized and automatized.
What is a Web Developer?
In order for you to become something, first, you need to understand what you’ll become.
A Web Developer is someone who can take care of the 2 conventionally divided parts usually involved in the development of a website. The Front-End and The Back-End Development.
The Front-End refers to everything involved in what the end-user will interact with (The user interface, client-side functionalities, graphic design, etc)
The Back-End makes reference to the internal workings of the website, the hidden functionality from the end-user. Is usually, a remote server that is actively listening for new requests coming from the client and managing the business logic of the website.
Let’s use an analogy to give a more defined division between these two concepts. Imagine a car, there are a lot of systems on it to make it do its function. but with most of these systems, we do not directly interact. There are parts that we do directly interact with, like the gas pedal, the brake pedal, the steering wheel, the dashboard, and so on, but for instance, we do not directly interact with the engine, the cooling system, the transmission, etc.
As you can see, with the example of a car, there is a clear division between the Front-End and the Back-End. being the Front-End everything we directly interact with, and the Back-End the inner workings that we DON’T directly interact with but takes a vital role in making the car function.
As with every analogy, it breaks at some point. But now you can have a more clear understanding of what these 2 parts refer to.
Web development can be divided into more parts, but for keeping things as simple and concise as possible, we’ll just let it that way.
Where to start?
One of the things you may struggle with when learning something new is the starting point. You may have a few ideas in mind already, but you want to be as efficient as possible.
Many will agree that the best thing to learn first is Front-End Development, which mainly involves learning these 3 technologies:
- HTML: HyperText Markup Language
- CSS: Cascade Style Sheets
- Javascript
Each of these technologies has different levels of complexity in terms of learning.
HTML and CSS are much simpler compared to Javascript. Because they are only languages of structure and style, there is not much login inside of it. On the other hand, Javascript is a single-threaded interpreted programming language that is capable of far more complex functionalities and therefore much more complexity when it comes to learning it.
The great news is that if you have previous experience with any other programming language, you will simplify the learning at least by a factor of 2. will be far easier.
You’ll eventually find that you need a server to handle other kinds of operations and functionalities. Then proceed with one of the following for the Back-End Development: C#, Python, PHP, NodeJS.
There are a lot of great resources available on the internet, but finding the right one can be a little tricky. Especially one that can encourage you to try yourself on every section explained, so it can be very interactive and you can gain confidence as you go learning new topics.
I personally recommend the following sites as an astonishing starting point:
- W3Schools: This is a platform that contains huge amounts of information about Web Development in general. It has a progressive structure of learning with an interactive console that will allow you to Try Yourself on every topic learned. The information is totally free and there is the option for paid courses. Personally, one of the greatest options to start
- Codecademy: A highly interactive platform that contains its own console to write the code. Contains both free and paid courses.
What’s essential and what’s not that much
The technologies mentioned above are vital for becoming Web Developer, but how deep you need to learn every technology is a topic for discussion.
There is a phenomenon that I notice when learning anything and is the diminishing marginal utility of the things learned. For instance, when you don’t know anything about a subject then every bit of extra information you learn comes with great utility because but as you learn more and more the utility of every extra information starts to decrease.
Think about this, in school, you did not need to read the entire Math Book to actually learn Math, because on every subject there is always what’s fundamental, essential, and then everything else, extensions, different applications on different scenarios, examples, etc. So limiting yourself to the essential and a bit of everything else would be fine.
Yeah, although you could read the whole book of Math, and actually know more than someone who doesn’t (Obviously), You have to compare the difference in utility between one another, and just then you’ll analyze if really worth reading the whole book.
The same applies to Web Development, Limiting yourself to the essentials and what’s actually needed to build the platform, the website, or the server, the better of you’ll be.
One strategy that I recommend for optimizing learning in terms of time consumed and utility of subjects is approaching the topics you need in the function of what you want to build.
Let’s go again with examples, I can make sort of a race line of things I want to build in order of complexity. It can be something like:
- Landing Page: Ok, I need to learn, HTML for the structure, CSS for the styling, and Javascript for the small functionalities and some animations.
- Landing Page With Subscription: Great, I need to learn the same as before, but now I need a Back-End to process the data of subscription, receive it and store it on a database, so I need to learn server-side programming languages like C#, Python or NodeJS, etc.
- Server to send emails: Well, I need to learn server-side programming languages like C#, Python, or NodeJS. Also, I need to find the right library to do the job.
With this technique, you can avoid learning unnecessary subjects and get things built!
Conclusions
Of course, there is still a lot being unsaid, that clearly cannot be covered by an article. But you can have now a starting point, a spark that can drive you to follow the right path and ultimately become a great Web Developer.
As with everything you want to be competitive and good with, it requires time and practice, Doesn’t exist overnight learning in this area but you can optimize as much as possible so you can really get things done, and learn the fundamentals.
This was a brief introduction and guide of how to become a Web Developer in a nutshell.
Thanks for Reading!
Social Media:
