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Ask HN: How does a beginner get started with web development in 2016?

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Re: Ask HN: How does a beginner get started with web development in 2016?

#11
Amongst the backend options, in terms of the concepts they employ, they're all more-or-less very similar. For that reason, especially as a beginner, I'd stick with a (micro)framework that's written in a language you're familiar with. If you're not familiar with any backend languages yet, then choose something that runs on Node (JavaScript). The point is, you want to reduce the number of technologies you're learning at once. Secondly, choose the leading/biggest (micro)framework of your desired language. The community will be the strongest (help is easier to find), the documentation is typically the best, there's more supporting libraries, etc. It just makes your life easier.

For the frontend, yes, it's kind of a shit-show. That said, I don't think you can go wrong with React/Redux/ES6. (Use create-react-app to get started).

Above all, don't worry about not knowing where to start. Pick something established and still popular, and stick with it. Don't look back. Learn it, inside and out. Once you've got the concepts under your belt, migrating to something else is a million times easier.

Re: Ask HN: How does a beginner get started with web development in 2016?

#12
(Personal story, by no means a reference)

I started by looking up how MVC frameworks function. Then made my own little framework in PHP. It was crappy, full of architecture/security/design/performance issues. But I learned a lot.

Then I picked up Symfony and Laravel (both PHP) with those you can make decent code, because they force you to.

After that I picked Node and Sails.js looked a lot like Laravel.

Re: Ask HN: How does a beginner get started with web development in 2016?

#14
post #5

Watch this brilliant video, I think the author nailed it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sBzRwzY7G-k tl;dr: - Learn Node, Django, or Ruby if you want to do the backend(personally, I HIGHLY recommend Django. It's extremely awesome and is the perfect way to start in my opinion). - Learn HTML/CSS/JS on the front end, then Sass and jQuery, then, if you want to be an advanced frontend developer - Webpack, React, and Redux. I…

Thanks for the great video! Between the three you recommended I ended up going with Django, largely because I've been meaning to get a grasp on Python for a while (I do a fair amount of bioinformatics work in R, and Python should be a useful complement for statistics tasks). Also, the Django project website has great tutorials for beginners to follow!
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