Web development is much more fun than you would think. Every day, you get to learn, solve problems and create beautiful designs for your projects. For many of us, it is a dream to make a living out of it.
The good news is that you don’t need to go to school for four years in order to start low and climb your way up as time goes by. With the resources available online (for free and paid) and determination, you can easily learn the craft of building websites from scratch.
Furthermore, you are the one establishing the pace! This means that, if you want to become a skilled web developer in the following year, it’s only up to you to make it so. True, it will take work, focus, and organization, but nothing worth doing comes easily!
Not to mention that, due to the growing popularity of mobile devices, apps, and e-commerce sites, the demand for web developers is expected to increase by 15% by 2022! Just take a minute to look online. You will find a lot of job opportunities without searching too much. So, if you are interested in becoming a web developer, we listed five of the most popular online resources that can help you start.
Hosted at W3Schools.com, this is the world’s largest online resource with free tutorials and guidelines for beginner web developers.
Furthermore, the platform also allows students to write code using the tools they provide and guides them through learning various programming languages such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, or SQL (for database maintenance).
There comes a time in the life of any beginner developer (regardless of niche or programming languages) when they need more than video tutorials and tips from online forums.
This reliable eLearning platform offers a ton of classes starting from 12$ on a huge variety of topics. You can easily learn advanced notions on the tools you need to use, to the different languages of coding without forgetting the most popular framework. It is worth every penny. We recommend you wait for specials to buy your classes as they come in very often (more than once a week). You will also have access to highly trained teachers via email and to a large community, which is monumental for your formation as a developer.
There will be a time when you will be looking at the same snippet of code for the past our wondering what the hell is not working with it. Sometimes, it just helps to see someone do it and to code along.
There are tons of great channel that will show you how to do for free. I might name traversymedia just to name one since it helped me so much in my professional development.
As a web developer, you can choose the type of coding you want to do:
Now, a web developer can do all of these or it can work on one of the three aspects of a site. Usually, beginners start with front-end, as it’s easier to grasp, and move on to backend, but don’t really cover the database part. Of course, your skills as a front or back end developer are important, and they will help you land a job or start interesting projects, but it would be great to have at least an idea of how everything works together.
If so, check out Codeacademy.com, a site that teaches you how to understand, use, and master various programming languages.
The Odin Project is a community of web developers that support beginners through tutorials and practical projects. The project has a lot of high-end resources, blog articles, and code examples that can be extremely helpful to both beginners and advanced developers.
Furthermore, this platform gives you the chance to jump-start your career by putting together a portfolio (the projects developed here are advanced and interesting).
The only way to become a master web developer is through practice, and Codewars.com is an online platform that challenges its users to think in code. In order to register, you have to prove your skills in your language of choice, and once you’re in, you will continuously be challenged to solve a wide array of problems.
The platform is extremely popular as it creates the perfect environment for learning. Not to mention, it gives you the chance to see other developers’ work and learn different approaches to a solution. Even more, it’s a way to prove your skills and strengthen your CV and portfolio.
The resources mentioned above are just an example of the type of tools you have at your disposal as a beginner web developer. However, nothing will happen without your dedication and effort to the topic. So, before you start choosing resources, make sure of what skills are the most important for you to pick up first. Learning in a proper order will make everything so much easier for you.