A very very good talk for those who want some guidance on how to become a web developer. I'd say it's also a great listen for those who already are:

 

Edited June 4, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

Start with a platform like Wordpress.

Wordpress is slowlybecoming the industry standard for small websites.

Do not skimp on leaning a programming language or MYSQL however, they will come in handy once you have a good grasp and those skills will put you above the rest

becoming a web developer need to start coding.

If you want to be a successful developer then learn by your own, You can refer external material but your own practice will make you perfect.

Start with learning basics of coding (HTML, CSS), there are tons of sites which provides free courses.

I would recommend Codecademy. It has awesome concept to dive in you into coding. Thats enogh for begging, later when you have your favorite programming language, purchase premium account on sites like Tuts plus and start diving deeper into coding.

Becoming a good web developer, u have to learn coding.

learn HTML, CSS, JQUERY, PHP and then u can develop your our website

w3schools.com is web site best for bigner.

I would say go with Wordpress as well. Like 'webbasedcoding' suggested. It is much easier to begin with and you wont be too overwhelmed right from the start. grab a book or a course to teach you the basics or something as for me its the easiest way. For starters I would recommend a book called "Wordpress: simple guide to create an attractive website or blog from scratch, step by step' by a dude named Felix. It will pretty much teach you the basics and get you on your way...

 

Here is a shortlink

goo.gl/yp1l5V

 

Hope that helps

 

Delfim

I agree with NOCK. You should start by learning the basics. Not WP or any other frameworks.

But I think the sequence might differ depending on which way you want to go with your career:

 

HTML

CSS

Basic procedural JS (Vanilla before jQuery)

Basic PHP/MySQL

 

At this point you should have a good idea if you want to work with front end or back end stuff or both (most freelancers do both).

 

For back end devs. Learn object oriented PHP or/and some other backend technology. There are highly paid niches for .Net, Java and Node.js.

Learn one or more CMS /development platforms

 

For front end devs.

Learn CSS preprocessors (Less or SASS) Learn advanced JS and maybe specialize in a JS framework like Angular

 

Freelancers would often have to learn a little bit of everything

Edited September 13, 201511 yr by Nillervision

In my eyes this is the route you should take to become a web developer, learn:

 

HTML

CSS

PHP

MySQL

 

In that order. Then, learn JavaScript and jQuery fundamentals including AJAX.

 

At that point I'd be happy to describe someone as a web developer.

 

You then have a decision to make on whether you're a front-ender or back-ender and you'll learn what you need to do that role well.

 

I do not see how anyone can learn Web Development by using WordPress and I think you could well end up in 'WordPress developer that doesn't really know anything about web development' territory.

 

Depends what you want to do, I know some very good developers that don't use PHP.

 

Right now JavaScript is by far the most important language to learn. So I'd advise to learn that first, learn how to use it on the server and in the client, then if you wish you can learn another back-end language like PHP, Python etc.

- I must add here there's no OOP strictly in JavaScript, at least not in the classical sense. Right now developers who are strong in functional programming are in extreme demand by the likes of Spotify, Netflix etc.

http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#work-complang -- Node.JS despite being relatively new is fetching extremely high wages, I expect in 2016 it will overtake Objective C in the US.

Demand for talented JavaScript developers is increasing, but there's a real lack of developers who actually understand the language.

Take a read of this.. https://medium.com/javascript-scene/javascript-training-sucks-284b53666245

 

If you wanna be specifically a front-end developer then there's no need to spend any time with backend languages beyond becoming acquainted with them.

 

What to learn will be different for each person (JavaScript aside), what's really critical though is the quality of your learning materials.

 

Treehouse then CodeSchool then Frontend masters in that order and you can't go far wrong. That was my blueprint to getting where I am now in less than 3 years. Yes they cost money, but so does time - a lot more than a measly $30 per month. People spend a fortune on education, here you can get entry to an incredible industry for mere fractions of what it costs for other (many lower paying) disciplines.

 

The next best thing for my learning was working with more experienced developers, that really accelerated things for me and I will continue to seek out developers more experienced than myself through conferences, meetups and open source collaboration. The poster who put work alone - that's bad advice. If you wanna go far learning things like pair programming and collaborating with teams is extremely important.

 

Lastly, document your learning, as I'm learning new things I write about them on my blog, writing about them helps you gain a deeper understanding - and for me at least helps me remember new things more effectively.

Edited September 13, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

I think we are all influenced a bit by what we do. People who works a lot with databases would maybe argue that security is the "most important" thing to learn. Many websites works very well without JS at all. But JS is really the only option today if you want interactions without postbacks, and refreshing pages and most users are expecting this behavior on sites today.

Edited September 14, 201511 yr by Nillervision

 

They might not use PHP but I bet they have a basic understanding of what it is, what it does and when they could use it if they wanted to?

 

JavaScript is an important language to learn, I don't dispute that, but I don't see why you'd learn that before HTML if you're wanting to become a Web Developer. If you don't understand HTML then how on earth are you going to understand DOM manipulation?

 

I wasn't including HTML or CSS in that as they're not programming languages, but yes they should be learnt first.

 

Most do know PHP because that was kind of the only option other than .net in the past, but these days there's quite a few who don't know any PHP. I'm not saying there's no point in learning it, it's still very heavily used, and I use it everyday. But on the backend there are many other options (C#, Java, Ruby etc), in the client there isn't.

 

JS is the language of the web, it's pretty much unnavoidable - Many devs know PHP, but every dev knows at least some JavaScript.

 

It has a lower barrier to entry too as you only need a browser to execute it.

Edited September 14, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

Ironically we may see in time that JS is moving more into the back end scene and the traditional JavaScript usage, as a fuctional layer on top of a document, will be replaced by fuctional HTML tags and attributes. We allready have stuff like form validation etc. in HTML5. And we will probably see a lot more of that in future specs. But it is just a tendency. Predicting the future of web development is like predicting the weather, you might know what it will look like tomorrow but you have no way of knowing what it will look like in a year.

Edited September 14, 201511 yr by Nillervision

I don't think the answer is all that black and white. Javascript jobs are very popular at the moment, but not everywhere, .NET gets you a top salary where I live. JS has the monopoly on a lot of things web, so makes sense to learn it for web development. The same isn't true for general programming though (not necessarily web based). There are plenty of languages that have jobs to be filled, each with pros and cons.

 

There's something to be said for specialised languages though. You don't have to know the hottest tool around to be employable and get a good salary. A lot of systems in government and hardware use obscure languages, and they need specialised people that can maintain and adapt the products, and that comes at a high cost. For example, a lot of NASA's systems are Java and Python based. I was also reading about Bloomberg's systems the other day. They're written in Fortran. I think there's also a lack of trust in JS for some applications. You wouldn't build the software for a nuclear reactor it JS, because there's just too much obscure behaviour in the language. I think a lot of people tend to look at what startups are using, but that's not a fair representation of how popular and in use a language is. One of the biggest in the valley (Facebook) uses PHP.

 

My advice would be. Pick a language that has an active community, active jobs, and you enjoy programming in. If you don't enjoy it, you won't want to pursue it any further. Study the language in as much detail as you can, even in terms of where it's heading. This will give you longevity in your career, as many developers just glance over the basics. Keep an eye on what other languages are doing, and what they are doing differently. More importantly, know programming fundamentals, not just language specific ones. You never know what can happen on the web. One day it's Javascript, the next it's Kittenscript, or something.

Edited September 14, 201511 yr by Jack

I don't think the answer is all that black and white. Javascript jobs are very popular at the moment, but not everywhere, .NET gets you a top salary where I live. JS has the monopoly on a lot of things web, so makes sense to learn it for web development. The same isn't true for general programming though (not necessarily web based). There are plenty of languages that have jobs to be filled, each with pros and cons.

 

There's something to be said for specialised languages though. You don't have to know the hottest tool around to be employable and get a good salary. A lot of systems in government and hardware use obscure languages, and they need specialised people that can maintain and adapt the products, and that comes at a high cost. For example, a lot of NASA's systems are Java and Python based. I was also reading about Bloomberg's systems the other day. They're written in Fortran. I think there's also a lack of trust in JS for some applications. You wouldn't build the software for a nuclear reactor it JS, because there's just too much obscure behaviour in the language. I think a lot of people tend to look at what startups are using, but that's not a fair representation of how popular and in use a language is. One of the biggest in the valley (Facebook) uses PHP.

 

My advice would be. Pick a language that has an active community, active jobs, and you enjoy programming in. If you don't enjoy it, you won't want to pursue it any further. Study the language in as much detail as you can, even in terms of where it's heading. This will give you longevity in your career, as many developers just glance over the basics. Keep an eye on what other languages are doing, and what they are doing differently. More importantly, know programming fundamentals, not just language specific ones. You never know what can happen on the web. One day it's Javascript, the next it's Kittenscript, or something.

 

That's true, although Facebook only uses *some* php, it's a bit of a behmoth

 

 

We have lots of pieces of code written in lots of different languages. A huge chunk is JavaScript, C++ and PHP (keep in mind that it's not your vanilla PHP, more of a PHP on steroids). The mobile clients are written in Java (Android) and Objective C (iOS). Other large pieces of code are probably written in Python and Ocaml.

 

I don't think JavaScript really is that obsure or difficult to trust, the problem is it's massively misunderstood, hopefully that is beginning to change with good teachers like Crockford and Kyle Simpson educating programmers in how to use the language effectively.

Some massive systems are built in it. Spotify, Paypal is going that route to name a few. It is starting to find it's way into robotics. The notion that is less secure than other langagues is false. Still many still think it is, but that is slowly changing.

That's true, although Facebook only uses *some* php, it's a bit of a behmoth

 

I don't think JavaScript really is that obsure or difficult to trust, the problem is it's massively misunderstood, hopefully that is beginning to change with good teachers like Crockford and Kyle Simpson educating programmers in how to use the language effectively.

Some massive systems are built in it. Spotify, Paypal is going that route to name a few. It is starting to find it's way into robotics. The notion that is less secure than other langagues is false. Still many still think it is, but that is slowly changing.

 

Facebook's implementation of PHP is different. You can run WP and other things off it though, it's crazy fast.

 

I agree with JS being misunderstood, and it's not even a security thing generally. Kyle is great at knowing the language, but he writes for the web. I'm talking about software that carries a lot of impact, like flight control systems, nuclear power stations, ect. Generally these are extremely high level and written in all sorts of obscure languages (usually older languages). I don't think JS would be suitable, despite being an ISO/IEC standard. You have to also consider what the compiler could be doing. An error in that could be fatal. Ideally you want a language and compiler that's already fairly fault tolerant, and the developers have confidence in the output. That's often why older languages are used, because they don't introduce any new bugs. Imagine what could happen with JS's floating point numbers, other languages have multiple types of integers to make it a little more fault tolerant, among other things.

 

I'm not dissing JS. I love the language, but it's never going to be a perfect solution for everything. Just like Ruby isn't great at computing vast amounts of data. Getting back to what I was saying before, some of these unknown languages pay extremely well, and offer different routes as a programmer. It's up to whoever learning to decide what they want to do with their new found skills.

Hello all

 

Some great advice here.

 

I have come from a print background and now I'm learning front end web development.

It's been a great challenge and I'm greatly enjoying learning to code, even though, I'm very much at the older category of budding developers (45 and counting.....)

 

I went on a short part-time course in front end web development, which gave me a very basic understanding of the subject.

I guess after such a short course, you have two options.

1. Dive into building sites and learn as you go along.

2. Dive into the whole range of online resources to deepen my knowledge of the basics of coding.

 

I chose option 2. I know many would go for option 1, but I wanted to give a really deep knowledge of the basics and move on from there.

 

So far, I would say I've got a good knowledge of html and css. My knowledge of js is limited but growing steadily. I tend to copy paste js code from web sources and know I'm becoming more confident of tweaking that code for me needs.

 

Living in London, there is lots of freelance print work for me. I tend to do a couple of weeks print work and then have a fews at home learning more code.

I'm lucky in the sense that I can afford to have time off work to focus on my coding.

 

The dilemma I'm facing now, is that my knowledge of coding is probably greater than would my portfolio and other websites I've built would suggest.

 

I'm looking for projects which will replace the time I have spent on online tutorials (working on code school, tuts plus and treehouse has been fantastic).

Feel I now need pressure of working for a client, to a deadline, to really get the best out of me and quicken the learning curve and to build my confidence.

 

Would be great to hear people's advice of where I should go from here. How can I find exciting projects which will give me the challenge I need.

While naturally, I would not be working for nothing, I'm happy to be paid a reduced hourly/daily rate for a short period until I've got a more impressive portfolio together (again, I'm sure people won't fully agree with this view, but I don't think I can demand a fee of an experience web developer).

 

Thanks for your time.

 

Sean

Yes, I agree with the colleagues that the first thing is to learn coding. And these days, one coding language is not enough anymore and will not amaze any employer, that's why developer profession becomes very hard, it's impossible to work without seeking all of the constantly chaching technologies and tech requirements.

Hello all

 

Some great advice here.

 

I have come from a print background and now I'm learning front end web development.

It's been a great challenge and I'm greatly enjoying learning to code, even though, I'm very much at the older category of budding developers (45 and counting.....)

 

I went on a short part-time course in front end web development, which gave me a very basic understanding of the subject.

I guess after such a short course, you have two options.

1. Dive into building sites and learn as you go along.

2. Dive into the whole range of online resources to deepen my knowledge of the basics of coding.

 

I chose option 2. I know many would go for option 1, but I wanted to give a really deep knowledge of the basics and move on from there.

 

So far, I would say I've got a good knowledge of html and css. My knowledge of js is limited but growing steadily. I tend to copy paste js code from web sources and know I'm becoming more confident of tweaking that code for me needs.

 

Living in London, there is lots of freelance print work for me. I tend to do a couple of weeks print work and then have a fews at home learning more code.

I'm lucky in the sense that I can afford to have time off work to focus on my coding.

 

The dilemma I'm facing now, is that my knowledge of coding is probably greater than would my portfolio and other websites I've built would suggest.

 

I'm looking for projects which will replace the time I have spent on online tutorials (working on code school, tuts plus and treehouse has been fantastic).

Feel I now need pressure of working for a client, to a deadline, to really get the best out of me and quicken the learning curve and to build my confidence.

 

Would be great to hear people's advice of where I should go from here. How can I find exciting projects which will give me the challenge I need.

While naturally, I would not be working for nothing, I'm happy to be paid a reduced hourly/daily rate for a short period until I've got a more impressive portfolio together (again, I'm sure people won't fully agree with this view, but I don't think I can demand a fee of an experience web developer).

 

Thanks for your time.

 

Sean

 

I went for option 2 too (Mostly) I'd say a 70/30 split between 2 and 1.

 

It's very important to do the groundwork and learn the fundamentals, this applies to every form of engineering. I used my 30% of projects to help get my job. Honesty you don't need a large portfolio. A single project demonstrating your abilities is more than enough. Quality > Quantity rules here. Also get a Github account and post code snippets, set up a blog and blog about what you're learning.

Even more important than actual knowledge is determinatiion to learn and a love for what you do, this can be demonstrated using the above. This is all I did to get employed as quickly as I did.

Don't try to be a jack of all trades, find out what you enjoy - front-end or backend and really focus on that. Over time you can get great at both, but the road to employment will be longer, most good agencies / startups tend to employ specialists in each area. I spent just 10% of my time on the back-end and with that learnt just enough PHP just to be dangerous.

Now my JavaScript skills have improved I am taking that onto the backend in my spare time - less of a learning curve because I already know the language.

 

The learning never stops, the more you learn you come to the realisation that you'll never be able to learn everything and the mountain of stuff you intend to learn continually grows - try to embrace this and find excitment in the fact you'll be learning for your whole career. A changing enviroment gives great opportunities to those who embrace it.

 

If you want more advanced stuff to learn checkout Frontendmasters. That site knocked me down a few pegs when I really stuggled with the content at first, now it is my go to resource.

Edited September 21, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

Yes, I agree with the colleagues that the first thing is to learn coding. And these days, one coding language is not enough anymore and will not amaze any employer, that's why developer profession becomes very hard, it's impossible to work without seeking all of the constantly chaching technologies and tech requirements.

 

Your second point Isn't entirely true. I only really know one language in any depth - JavaScript.

You can discount HTML and CSS Sass etc - they aren't languages, neither is GIT/terminal although they are all necessary.

The only language you need to know on the Front-end is JavaScript.

 

Generally speaking knowing a single language really well is better than knowing many languages, but without much ability in any. Of course it's good to expand one's knowledge and learn other languages but it's not something you wanna be looking to do really early on when you're still looking for your first gig.

 

Those job advertisements where they list a large bunch of languages for a modest wage are best ignored. Many HR teams have no idea about what they are advertising.

Edited September 21, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

 

Are you sure?

 

HTML = HyperText Markup Language

 

 

They fall under markup languages, not programming ones. Sort of like Markdown.

 

I think that's a debatable topic, but considering you can't do anything dynamic with HTML or CSS out of the box, I don't consider them true programming languages. There's a good answer on the topic here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/145176/is-html-considered-a-programming-language

 

They fall under markup languages, not programming ones. Sort of like Markdown.

 

I think that's a debatable topic, but considering you can't do anything dynamic with HTML or CSS out of the box, I don't consider them true programming languages. There's a good answer on the topic here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/145176/is-html-considered-a-programming-language

 

I wouldn't even count Sass as a true programming language, even though it does have loops, functions etc. I'm not sure where the line is drawn though, I guess it's debateable with Sass. Although the time taken to learn Sass vs a true programming language is much, much smaller.

Web development consist of front end development and back end development.

 

Front end development covers the designing of web pages which we see on web. it is a interface through which we communicate and it is designing of page. for front end development can be done using html, css, and javascript.

 

Back end development covers the database related kind of things and for this we use php, java .net programming languages.

 

if you want learn web development than you should use tutorials available on web which are free of cost and through which use can learn web development step by step with ease.

 

Are you sure?

 

HTML = HyperText Markup Language

 

 

 

I wouldn't even count Sass as a true programming language, even though it does have loops, functions etc. I'm not sure where the line is drawn though, I guess it's debateable with Sass. Although the time taken to learn Sass vs a true programming language is much, much smaller.

 

Most of the languages debated here are NOT programming languages. Not even PHP or JS. These languages are scripting languages which per definition are interpreted at runtime. A programming language would have to be compiled to low level assembly language on build.

 

Though SASS needs to be "compiled" it is NOT compiled to bytecode but merly to another high level syntax (CSS). It is not a scripting language either. SASS and LESS have functional features but so does plain CSS (conditions such as media queries can be evaluated)

The languages for styling have their own category they are simply called style languages or style sheet languages.

 

As @@Jack said, HTML is neither a programming or scripting language, but markup language.

Edited September 21, 201511 yr by Nillervision

Web development consist of front end development and back end development.

 

Front end development covers the designing of web pages which we see on web. it is a interface through which we communicate and it is designing of page. for front end development can be done using html, css, and javascript.

 

Back end development covers the database related kind of things and for this we use php, java .net programming languages.

 

if you want learn web development than you should use tutorials available on web which are free of cost and through which use can learn web development step by step with ease.

 

I'm a frontend developer and I don't do any design - the key is in the name - development, not design. Learning to develop - properly is anything but easy, but there are good tutorials and a whole heap of bad ones. Go with a paid resource like Treehouse or codeschool and you will be getting guranteed high quality content.

Edited September 21, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

 

 

Most of the languages debated here are NOT programming languages. Not even PHP or JS. These languages are scripting languages which per definition are interpreted at runtime. A programming language would have to be compiled to low level assembly language on build.

 

Though SASS needs to be "compiled" it is NOT compiled to bytecode but merly to another high level syntax (CSS). It is not a scripting language either. SASS and LESS have functional features but so does plain CSS (conditions such as media queries can be evaluated)

The languages for styling have their own category they are simply called style languages or style sheet languages.

 

As @@Jack said, HTML is neither a programming or scripting language, but markup language.

 

JavaScript is a fully blown programming language. You can do more in JS than most of the other languages - It was the first to bring first class functions to the mainstream. Many huge applications like Spotify built almost entirely in JavaScript - a typical scripting language is not able to do this.

 

JS also is not interpreted it is complied just before execution. Closure would not be possible if it were interpreted.

Edited September 21, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

Most of the languages debated here are NOT programming languages. Not even PHP or JS. These languages are scripting languages which per definition are interpreted at runtime. A programming language would have to be compiled to low level assembly language on build.

 

JavaScript is compiled at runtime (JIT).

 

extract from chromes v8 wikipedia

 

V8 compiles JavaScript to native machine code (IA-32, x86-64, ARM, PowerPC, IBM s390 or MIPS ISAs)[3][6] before executing it, instead of more traditional techniques such as interpreting bytecode or compiling the whole program to machine code and executing it from a filesystem. The compiled code is additionally optimized (and re-optimized) dynamically at runtime, based on heuristics of the code's execution profile. Optimization techniques used include inlining, elision of expensive runtime properties, and inline caching, among many others.

 

Other browsers have similar engines.

^^V8 is quite a astonishing really.

^Fair enough. Just seems strange to name a language, that is not a scripting language as ECMAScript, and all its implementations JavaScript, ActionScript and JScript

Edited September 21, 201511 yr by Nillervision

It's also strange that it has Java in the name, but bears no real similarity to Java - It's all in the politics and marketing when it was released by Netscape

 

I think back in the day a scripting language was one that didn't require a complex IDE to code in? Maybe I'm wrong in that, but the term - a scripting language gives you the impression that it's almost likey a toy language, that you use it to make small 'scripts'

 

That's not really the case with modern JavaScript. For all intents and purposes it's a full programming language. Just massively misunderstood by an alarming number of devs who are quick to dismiss it.

Edited September 21, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

I don't think a scripting language per definition has to be less "powerfull" than a programming language. PHP has also evolved into a fully featured language too.

The definition i stick to is whether your code is compiled on build or interpreted at runtime. JIT could maybe be considered somewhere in-between I guess.

Edited September 21, 201511 yr by Nillervision

Yeah, it's more the notion that some people assume JavaScript - even in 2015 is some sort of toy language. It's pretty annoying

Edited September 21, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

hiiii....

i know web devlopement coding but thanks for other information..