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Ever since the pandemic has taken over, people have jumped in online and have joined the programming train. A lot of studies showed tremendous growth in the number of software developers in the year 2020.
The web is arguably the most popular platform for development, some say the easiest to develop as well, closely followed by Mobile Apps and Desktop applications, which is why there are tons of languages and frameworks at the forefront of this field.
Having worked in web development for the last 2-3 years, here's a roadmap I'd like to present for newcomers to follow. I have dropped resources at the end of each section for you to refer to. Have a good read :)
Understanding The Web
Before we get into coding, I believe it is really important for us to understand how the internet works. What happens behind the scenes when you enter youtube.com in your browser in itself is a fascination and trust me, it'll help you in the long run when you work with frameworks and later, in deployment and hosting, etc.
Here's a video that might help :)
Setting Up Your IDE
If it takes you 25 seconds to create a new folder and open a new file in there, you are losing out on time.
It is really important to have a fast IDE, which makes sure that the majority of your time is spent on coding. I use Visual Studio Code and I do recommend using it as well (almost everyone does) but it's up to you.
As long as you make websites look beautiful and functional, it shouldn't matter much. But sometimes, having a good looking IDE just boosts your productivity by a little bit. Keep in mind that good IDEs have extensions that will help you work with different languages and frameworks in the long run.
Finally, HTML
According to a survey, developers spend more time customizing their IDEs than learning HTML. Clearly not the way to go. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the structure of what you see in your browser. It is definitely one of the easiest things to learn, but that doesn't mean that it should be ignored. I have had myself doing a lot of weird stuff in Javascript until only I realized that it was a one-word attribute in an HTML tag.
Don't do this to yourself. Have a good look at HTML before you move forward. It might not help you hack NASA, but can definitely help you make great websites.
CSS
CSS is literally what this meme says. While HTML takes care of the structure and markup, CSS beautifies it. It is really important in my opinion and you should learn it.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, do not sell your souls to CSS frameworks before you actually learn CSS. Frameworks do not provide permanent solutions. They can save you time, but you will need original and more custom styles in the long run. Older the framework, the more repetitive the style.
For learning HTML and CSS, here's a comprehensive Udemy course from Brad Traversy. It also takes you through Sass at the end and is an amazing project-based course.
Also, check this Net Ninja crash course on YouTube .
Javascript
The next obvious thing to do after learning HTML and CSS is to learn Javascript. One of the most common mistakes developers do is to jump into frameworks before understanding the core of any language. I was the culprit of this as well when I jumped into Laravel without having any idea of PHP. Heck, I realized a week into my internship that Laravel was a PHP framework. Yeah, that's how dumb I was.
So yeah, learn Javascript and its core before you get into Javascript frameworks like React.
Learning Javascript can help you make better websites and get more Twitter followers sometimes😛.
This crash course will help you get a good idea about Modern Javascript.
I hope this gave you a decent idea of starting with web development. If you are new to programming in general, I'd suggest also learning Version Control with Git and Github, because it is an integral part of development, regardless of platform or domain.
Thank you for reading!