1st portfolio, which languages/framework to use

Thanks Alicia for your point of view ans suggestions👌 I thought about Gatsby instead , as I have many posts in here talking about it. I am gonna check those links you shared and try to make up my mind and channel myself 😀

I recommend the 9 projects you can do to become a frontend master too.

I think the most helpful step to take is to finish small projects (i.e., 2-3 days efforts project). It gives you a sense of why and how to utilize these web technologies.

After you finish your 1st small project (let's say a react project), you may realize what you don't know but curious about. It'll lead you to the next experiment.

Okay if it's not imposters syndrome, perhaps is the fact that you just learned 5+ things at once, I say learned, you probably know more than you think, but you need to use those skills to affirm that confidence.

On to the question, you have chosen to write a portfolio, I will give you 2 choices that might fit your skillset today. Backend first, laravel is a great PHP framework which would be a blast to write a 1 - 4 page site, or you could go all JavaScript and use node.js as the backend.

On the front end you like React so use that.

If your building a portfolio I recommend building it with what-ever you want, but build other projects if you can to advertise and learn new things.

After 5 months of studying you should have at least the basics down. I recommend learning more about what choices are available yourself so you have a better context as to what you learned during that time, and have a better idea of what you'd like to learn next. For example, you should know the advantages and disadvantages of using something like React. Also JQuery, React, Node are all just JavaScript, which I recommend sticking to. I don't recommend learning other languages unless you plan on focusing on back-end. There is also languages like TypeScript, but I consider learning TypeScript secondary to core JS skills.

So at this point I'd say there are 3 approaches you could take when it comes to building something on your own for more experience/practice.

1. Use a framework and get better at it, with more complex problems.

2. Don't use a framework and learn the bare bones of using JS. I don't believe you would end up using this knowledge directly at work most of the time, but its the kind of stuff that powers what ever you do end up using (SPA frameworks aren't magic)

3. Dump the front-end and focus on just JavaScript by learning Nodejs. Programming is programming, regardless of where it t is done. In node there is no DOM, so you get to focus more on the data than client-side focused API's.