Tips That You Need To Know To Become a Full-Stack Web Developer
Knowing web development can be a huge advantage. Even a simple understanding of the basics can be extremely useful for representatives of many IT professions, including the founders of start-ups. This article briefly discusses the tools and technologies that a novice, the complex web developer must master. Also, useful resources are provided to help you quickly start your training. And if you just want to get a basic idea of web development, then it’s enough to finish reading the chapter “Backend-Frameworks”.
Basics (HTML / CSS / JS)
One of the best ways to learn the basics is to take an online course. For example, The Web Developer Bootcamp on Udemy. Here you will go through the whole process of creating your first site, after which you will be clearer where to move on.
Frameworks
Frameworks are tools that make it easier and faster to implement all the common functionality. We recommend that you start using them as early as possible because frameworks will help you achieve results much faster, and at the same unobtrusively and naturally show you proven methods of web development. Thanks only to the use of frameworks, you very quickly absorb a lot of knowledge, without wasting time on unnecessary things.
In web development, you always have to choose from a huge number of technologies. And for a beginner, this choice can be difficult. We will not put you in such a situation, leading the advantages and disadvantages of different solutions, and throughout the article, we will simply give you advice that it is better to take, based on your experience.
It’s best to start learning Bootstrap and jQuery. Today, these are the most popular frameworks used to create the vast majority of sites.
Bootstrap – CSS-framework, which provides a bunch of easily adaptable interface elements. It allows you to create adaptive sites very quickly (that is, they look good on mobile devices). Recently released a new version of Bootstrap, so you can start learning from this online course.
jQuery – JavaScript-framework, greatly simplifying the manipulation of elements of a web page. It has a lot of plug-ins for every conceivable task, so when you need some kind of interactive element, you can be sure that you will find a way to create it with jQuery. And it will be very easy to do because StackOverflow already has a solution of 95% of the problems that you will encounter.
For the sake of completeness, the picture is also mentioned by Compass. At the very beginning, you do not need to think about it, because when creating websites, you can do without this framework. But when you reach the level at which you will write a large amount of advanced CSS, and for you, it will become quite boring, then be sure to pay attention to the Compass. It greatly speeds up the process of writing CSS, making it less tedious, so if you select a couple of hours to study Compass, it will become one of the most effective accelerators of your productivity.
WordPress
WordPress – the most popular in the world CMS (content management system), a content management system. If you just want to find out how you can just customize your site, then install and study WordPress. This is enough, you will not have to learn anything else. For WordPress, there is an astronomical number of graphic themes and plug-ins that will cover at least 90% of your needs.
Domain Names and Hosting
Having mastered the basics of creating your first website, you will want to share it with the world. To save you hours of reflection and choice, We will not throw out hundreds of options available and only offer a squeeze out of the “right” things.
To purchase domain names outside the Runet, use Namecheap. As the name of the service suggests, there are very good prices, and besides, a wonderful service.
For hosting you can use Bluehost, this is cheap, very easy to use service, with excellent documentation and numerous automation tools. It’s very simple to deploy WordPress or to want simple HTML pages, so if you want to start quickly – it’s the most.
And when you gain a little experience, you will need a VPS – a virtual private server. In fact, it’s a remote computer, on which you are granted full access. It will serve your sites, which you will create with the help of frameworks. We recommend using DigitalOcean, this service has good prices, a nice and intuitive interface.
Backend Frameworks
So, you created a few simple websites using the above tools, and are ready to go further to become a professional builder of custom projects.
In this case, it’s best to study one of the backend frameworks. These frameworks work on the server and dynamically generate HTML for the site each time the user accesses the URL.
As usual, there are a bunch of available products, but we recommend immediately contacting Django, Ruby on Rails and Node / Express.
You can hear different opinions about which of these frameworks should be studied first, but we highly recommend starting with Django and then switching to Node/Express.
The main advantage of Django is that it is written in Python-a beautiful and powerful language used wherever you can imagine. In addition, it is the best choice as the first programming language.
Django itself is a simple, powerful, flexible, perfectly documented framework. It contains all the tools that you will need to create 95% of your sites. More importantly, it will give you an excellent basis for thinking about the backend code, and understand it is a great way to learn the basics of web development in general.
My favorite course for beginners is Getting Started with Django, for further study I recommend an excellent book Two Scoops of Django. Also, do not go past the free video tutorials of Mike Hibbert.
Node and Express
Node and Express are very powerful tools that I recommend studying after Django. For beginners, they may seem complicated, but if you already know Django, then you will not have problems.
Node has many advantages, and it’s best to experience them on your own. Often this framework allows you to create sites much faster than Django. You will get a deeper understanding of the numerous concepts of backend programming, it will be easier for you to create APIs that run real-time web applications (for example, chat rooms or games), as well as universal web applications (you will encounter them when learning React). The best-known online course on Node.
Front-End Frameworks
If you have mastered HTML/CSS/JS and some backend framework, then you are already a very skilled web developer, able to create many kinds of sites. And if you want to become a full-stack developer, then welcome to the world of front-end frameworks.
They allow you to create powerful single-page applications. At the current stage, you create applications that are entirely executed in the browser, sometimes exchanging data with the server (like Gmail or Trello).
In this area, various products competed for a long time, but today the choice is obvious – you need to study React and Redux.
We will not describe how they work or what are their advantages (it will take a lot of time), but fortunately, there is an absolutely amazing online course from which you will learn everything you need – Modern React with Redux. And to learn more advanced functionality, you can see the second part of the course – Advanced React and Redux. Its author, Stephen Grader, is an incredible teacher. He can very well and enthrallingly explain, so you will not be boring at all to learn all the wisdom of these instruments.
We highly recommend creating a site using Node and React/Redux, because this will help you to understand how to create and use the REST API, and also on the basis of a set of technologies to create powerful and useful software.
DevOps
The last piece of the mosaic called “complex web developer.” You need to study DevOps. This is a profound subject in which we are not an expert, but you will not find it too difficult to understand the basics of deploying websites.
Surely at this stage, you already learned a lot from this experience. Perhaps you have already used Github and some CI tools for deploying sites and Nginx for their maintenance.
It’s time to study Docker. This is the industry standard for deploying web applications, making the process fast, elegant and convenient.
Conclusion
Of course, it is impossible to cover all aspects of this multifaceted, complex and rapidly developing sphere in one article, but we believe that this article will give you an understanding of the path that lies before you and will become a useful guide. We wish we could read something like that a few years ago.
Of course, as you study, you will be able to dive deeper into some technologies, master some tools more fully, but we hope that now your path will be less twisted and confusing.
