According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of employment opportunities in the web development domain is expected to increase by 13% in 2020-2030. It is among the highest numbers concerning the average of all other professions.
A web developer is a professional who develops websites for individuals or businesses. A full-stack web developer works on the front-end as well as the back-end components of the website. The front-end component entails how websites will look when delivered to the clients. The back-end component, on the other hand, stores and processes data securely.
In today's digital era, where almost every business is looking for its own website, web developers are one of the most sought-after professionals. Due to their level of impact through their expertise, they fall under one of the most highly paid professionals.
1. What is web development?
Web development, as mentioned above, is a process that constitutes the development of a website. Let's understand how a website works and comprehend the distinctions between front-end and back-end development. Web Developer roadmap consists of learning of both these concepts.
2. What’s the difference between front-end and back-end?
The terminologies “front-end,” “back-end,” and “full-stack” web development outline which component of the client/server you’ll be working on (Here, “client” can be referred to as a web browser, like Google Chrome, Firefox, etc. whereas “server” is a web application server at a remote location that will process web requests and send pages to the client).
“Front-end” refers to the tasks you'll be undertaking, majorly regarding the client side or the part of the website with which the user interacts. It’s known as the “front-end,” containing elements you can directly see through the browser. On the contrary, the “back-end” is the website component you can't see, but it deals with a ton of crucial functionality and logic and is responsible for the internal workings of a website.
3. Full-Stack Developer Roadmap - Top Skills A Full-Stack Developer Should Have
Let us now look at the full-stack developer roadmap which will serve as a guide regarding the skills you need to learn to become a full-stack developer.
🚀 Learn the Fundamentals - HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
As we saw earlier, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are three of the fundamental skills to become a front-end developer. Thus, you must make yourself familiar and comfortable with these three skills. This is the very first step in our front-end road map.
🔸 Resource to learn HTML and CSS: https://youtu.be/6mbwJ2xhgzM (Tutorial 1 - 45)
⚠️ Before diving into JavaScript make sure your basics of HTML And CSS are good. Practice by creating personal projects using HTML And CSS.
🔸 Resource to learn JavaScript: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu0W_9lII9ahR1blWXxgSlL4y9iQBnLpR
🚀 Learn any of the CSS Frameworks
Once you are comfortable with the basics - HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, it is time to move on to the next step in the roadmap for the front end, which is learning any of the CSS Frameworks. These frameworks would speed up the development process for you. CSS Frameworks like Bootstrap, Materialize, Tailwind (Preferred), Semantic UI, Bulma, etc. make it easier to develop a consistent website.
⚠️ Before diving into the CSS framework, create at least 3 - 4 personal projects In HTML CSS JS without following any tutorial on youtube or somewhere else. It will make your fundamentals strong.
🔸 Resource to learn Tailwind CSS: https://youtu.be/OYdkBxbJFks
🚀 Learn any of the CSS Preprocessors
CSS files can quickly become huge and difficult to maintain. Moreover, CSS doesn’t support some powerful programming features like variables and functions. Thus, we make use of CSS preprocessors that are scripting languages, extending the default capabilities of CSS. SASS/SCSS (Preferred), Stylus, and Less are a few popular preprocessors.
🔸 Resource to learn SCSS: https://youtu.be/tEQOdFgUXI4
🚀 Learn any JavaScript Framework
JavaScript framework is pre-written code to support features and benefits beyond plain or vanilla JavaScript. As these frameworks are built on top of JavaScript, it is possible to achieve all the features of a framework with normal JavaScript as well. However, these frameworks offer enhanced functionality without writing the code from scratch. This is the reason why Front End Developers usually prefer using a framework over plain JavaScript. Angular, React (Preferred), Vue.js, and Meteor are some of the popular JavaScript frameworks for front-end development. Express JS is the popular JavaScript framework for backend development. You can also find specialized roles in React, Angular, Vue, And Express JS
🔸 Resource to learn React And Express JS: https://youtu.be/-mJFZp84TIY
🚀 Learn State Management Libraries
Along with any JavaScript Framework, it is recommended to learn State Management Libraries like Redux (Preferred), VueX, NgRX, XState, etc. depending on which framework you choose to learn.
All the interactive web applications work by responding to “events”. When a certain event occurs, the “state” of your application, i.e. the data stored in variables, gets updated. The variables that determine the state of your interactive web application need to be stored somewhere. This is where State Management comes into the picture. It deals with storing and updating the state of the application.
⚠️ Before diving into state management libraries make sure your react concepts (Context API, API Calls, useState And useEffect Hooks) are good. Make at least 2 - 3 Projects (some ideas - Netflix clone, todo app, weather app) without following any tutorial on youtube or somewhere else.
🔸 Resource to learn Redux Toolkit: https://youtu.be/bbkBuqC1rU4 (Learn redux toolkit as it will save much of your time that official redux setup takes. It is also recommended by developers of redux to use the redux toolkit instead of core redux)
🚀 Learn the basics of Package Managers
While working on Full Stack Development, you will come across Package Managers. A Package Manager is a tool that allows you to install, configure, update, and manage software packages, and product dependencies and also to publish your own packages. With the use of Package Managers, the development process is faster and easier as you can reuse code libraries created by other developers that are published to a central repository. NPM and Yarn (Preferred) are two popular package managers.
🔸 You would have learned how to use npm in react js course that I mentioned above. For yarn, it works the same way as npm. There is not much difference b/w them.
🔸 You can read this for yarn: https://phoenixnap.com/kb/yarn-vs-npm#ftoc-heading-11
🚀 Learn Version Control System
A Version Control System is useful if you are working on a large project or need to collaborate with other developers. It is software that allows you to manage and track changes to the source code and also revert to a previous version of the code, instead of manually reverting the changes. Git is one of the most popular and widely used version control systems.
🔸 Resource to learn Git: https://youtu.be/evknSAkUIvs
🚀 Learn Testing
While many companies have dedicated Quality Assurance teams for extensive testing of the application, as a developer, you will be expected to perform basic testing of your application to ensure usability and functionality. Writing test cases for your code is a way to ensure that the code is working as expected. There are different levels of testing in front-end development like Unit Testing and End-to-End Testing. Several tools are available for testing like Jest (Preferred), Mocha, Jasmine, Cypress, etc.
🔸 Resource to learn Jest: https://youtu.be/T2sv8jXoP4s
🚀 Learn Tools for Website Deployment
Once you have built your website, you need to deploy this website so that anyone on the internet can visit the website and use it. To deploy a website, you will need to know the basics of hosting tools. You can use tools like Github Pages, Netlify, Vercel, etc. Cloud Providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure also provide hosting services.
🔸 Resource to learn Vercel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeFlfBR1lxw
🔸 Resource to learn Netlify: https://youtu.be/OiGf_FUJFz4
🔸 Resource to learn Github Pages: You would have learned Github Pages in react js course by Code With Harry that I mentioned above.
🚀 Learn Advanced Topic
Practice, Practice, And Practice. Explore more things on your own. Research advanced topics of react and express js for example you can learn Next JS after learning to react or you can learn React Native for mobile application development. Just Don't Stop!
4. Role of AI (Artificial Intelligence) In Web
The role of AI in web development is massive. Its prominence has created business opportunities that would not have otherwise existed. For example, ride-sharing platforms like Uber and Lyft use AI to pair drivers and riders in real time. Their machine learning algorithm can predict when there will be demand for the service, so drivers can use this information to maximize their income. Now, these companies are amongst the largest in the world. Many enterprises use artificial intelligence to gather online insights to improve their operations and surpass their competitors. With all these benefits, it is difficult to predict that AI will lose its prominence in web development. It is likely to be used more and improved over time.
Happy Coding! 😀
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