Where do you begin?
So many languages to learn, so many paths to take so where does one brand new to all this begin? I’m Aimee a Front-End Developer, I started my web developer job in 2016 as a junior web developer. I only really knew HTML, CSS and a tiny bit of jQuery. As a junior there is so much to learn and it can all be a bit overwhelming, but don’t give up, keep motivated and keep going. I’m going to show you some paths you can take.
Front-End Developer
You can become a Front-End Developer, Back-End Developer or a Full Stack Developer These are just three roles.
If you want to be a Front End Developer, like me, I would start by learning HTML and CSS they are both very important for building websites. So if you don’t already know HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and CSS stands for Cascading style sheets. With both of these you can build static websites. You can think of HTML as a cake, a plain cake with nothing on it, the structure then you can add some CSS which is like decoration, so your cake becomes pretty and nice looking.
Then there is Javascript which is to make it even more fancy, put in some candles and sprinkles. Javascript is to give interaction on a webpage like a menu bar toggling or an Accordion that opens/closes. I would start learning this after you learn HTML and CSS. There are also libraries and frameworks you can start learning too like jQuery, React, Angular , or Vue. But I would stick to vanilla Javascript and learn the basics of that before diving into them other ones my advice.
Also set yourself up a Github account and learn the basics of git, I’ll talk about that in another blog but it’s quiet easy to learn. It’s just a version control for your code so if you make a mistake you can go back to an older version.
Another good site is Netlify, you can host websites on there for free if they are static websites.
Download yourself a good text editor, I used to use Sublime Text but I have now moved over to VSCode they both have some great plugins and themes.
Back-End Developer
So a Back-End Developer is server-side for this you need to know languages such as PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, .Net, C#, C, MySQL, NodeJS. Node lets you use Javascript on the server-side. So you could have an application that has a front-end and back-end, for example you fill in a form on a webpage and it sends the data from the front-end to the back-end via a script and the server-side will store that form data in a database.
Full-Stack Developer
Which brings me onto a Full Stack Developer, this is basically a front-end developer and a back-end developer, having knowledge of both client-side and server-side. So it all depends on your preference and what you are interested in, as for me I like the front-end I like making designs come to life.
So I hope this has been helpful, below is a list of resources that I find great for learning and which I also use.
FreeCodeCamp
Udemy
Codecademy
Codepen: Front End Playground
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