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Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

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Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#51

Post by jakejake »

sharemywin wrote: post #4

Instead of trying to do it all at once you might want to take it in chunks. I would start on the front end and I would start with looking into Bootstrap and jquery. And look at using PHP to deliver the webservice data to jquery. http://tutorialzine.com/2015/01/shoutbox-php-jquery/ ------ I would also google some MVC PHP tutorals to get some idea of how MVC works since alot of modern frameworks are modeled after it. -…

+1 for just starting with bootstrap - which will introduce you to a little jQuery. That'll be a good foundation and will allow you to have some fun without being overwhelmed.

Once you have that in your pocket you'll be ready to try any of the new js frameworks that are being mentioned here.

Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#52

Post by gelatocar »

davewasthere wrote: post #12
brudgers wrote: post #6

My take is that a greater percentage of websites can be written in HTML and CSS than currently are: both in the sense of websites that could be entirely written in HTML and CSS and as portions of websites that can be written in HTML and CSS instead of with something else. Many of current batch of tools were developed to meet the needs of engineering teams at scale: e.g. Angular @ Google and React @ Facebook. Their he…

Completely this. If I teleported here from the 90s, first thing I'd need to wrap my head around is how HTML and CSS have changed. I'd be learning a responsive framework (or even hand-rolling it, so you know how it works) like bootstrap. And doing a very basic website. And if html5 & responsive css aren't enough to wrap your head around at once, I'd create a github account, and start with github pages. That'll let you…

Staying out of silos and rabbit holes would probably mean avoiding bootstrap, github and the like. Totally agree on building clean, responsive sites though.

Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#53

Post by pfarnsworth »

Asking here probably isn't the best thing, because most people here are at the forefront of the latest and greatest, so you will probably get a ton of suggestions and reasons why. Throw mine on top of the pile as well.

You need to first define what your goal is. Do you want to become a full-time front-end developer? Do you want to be a full-stack, etc. Different aspects will require a different subset.

First and foremost, you will need to figure out how to get more free-time so that you can master a whole slew of technologies that have come and gone in the last 20 years. This is a cold, hard fact. You have a lot of ground to make up for, and if you can't even start up a web site, it's going to be tough getting legitimacy as a modern front-end developer.

I would start off with the fundamentals, ie. HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Knowing how to build things from scratch, using AJAX, etc, from pure Javascript without frameworks will help you understand why some frameworks are better than others. Then you can migrate to JQuery and Bootstrap. Once you have mastered these, you can then go on to whatever current framework best suits you, but you'll be able to understand the current challenges best.

Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#54

Post by nalck »

I was taught table layout in school and had to relearn everything. First place I'd start today is http://diveintohtml5.info/. After that look into CSS3, http://myth.io helps you make sure your styles are cross-browser. Lots of comments talk about static generators and web frameworks already. Use the JavaScript pixie dust sparingly and you'll be fine.

Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#55

Post by blhack »

Here's a semi-controversial opinion: you probably don't need to learn much.

You don't need hipster.js to build a website. You can still build websites that can be used by millions of people using PHP, mysql, and HTML.

Lots and lots of people will tell you to learn hipster.js, and will imply that if you aren't using something written by 3 20 year olds in a coffee shop during a hackathon, that you can't get The Scale.

But the reality is that people have been getting The Scale with the tools that you already know since you learned them.

Here is a relevant blog post: http://thingist.com/t/item/21434/

Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#56

Post by cpayne »

blhack wrote: post #55

Here's a semi-controversial opinion: you probably don't need to learn much. You don't need hipster.js to build a website. You can still build websites that can be used by millions of people using PHP, mysql, and HTML. Lots and lots of people will tell you to learn hipster.js, and will imply that if you aren't using something written by 3 20 year olds in a coffee shop during a hackathon, that you can't get The Scale.…

THIS is spot on!

The only thing I'd add is to choose one of those technologies (jQuery / Node / Angular / Whatever!) and learn it (reasonably) well.

I can't tell you how many times I've used Pluralsight to bone up on a particular technology...

Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#57

Post by sreejithr »

cpayne wrote: post #56
blhack wrote: post #55

Here's a semi-controversial opinion: you probably don't need to learn much. You don't need hipster.js to build a website. You can still build websites that can be used by millions of people using PHP, mysql, and HTML. Lots and lots of people will tell you to learn hipster.js, and will imply that if you aren't using something written by 3 20 year olds in a coffee shop during a hackathon, that you can't get The Scale.…

THIS is spot on! The only thing I'd add is to choose one of those technologies (jQuery / Node / Angular / Whatever!) and learn it (reasonably) well. I can't tell you how many times I've used Pluralsight to bone up on a particular technology...

Dude, you're missing the point. Angular ⊂ hipster.js.

Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#58

Post by hunvreus »

I agree with the opinion of many others in this thread that you'll be able to recycle a good amount of your skills, but you may want to get familiar with a couple additional tools;

1. Start by creating a GitHub [1] account if you can.

2. Get started with a simple GitHub page. This will get you familiar with the GitHub interface, some basic Git concepts and will refresh your HTML skills.

3. Hack around the CSS and templates. Have some fun an break things.

From there you can start exploring more things;

- Start looking into SASS [2], which is natively supported by Jekyll [3].

- Set up Jekyll on your local machine [4] (beware, I've always found Ruby to be a mess to deal with).

- Add jQuery [5] and start adding some simple effects (scroll to the top, maybe look into adding simple toggle effects for menu on mobile).

Now, you could go and try to learn more advanced stuff (React, AngularJS and all that jazz), but with a GitHub account and some knowledge of HTML5, CSS3 and JS/jQuery you'll be able to do a fair amount of damage already. Worry about the fancy stuff later on once you're comfortable again with building sites.

PS: don't use tables for your layouts, and don't use Dreamweaver ;). Atom [6] is a good free alternative editor from GitHub. You can figure out later on what works better for you (Sublime? Eclipse?) but it will get you started.

Also, Codecademy [7] is your friend.

[1] https://pages.github.com/

[2] http://sass-lang.com/

[3] http://jekyllrb.com/docs/assets/

[4] http://jekyllrb.com/

[5] https://jquery.com/

[6] https://atom.io/

[7] https://www.codecademy.com/

Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#59

Post by adamconroy »

It depends what you are trying to achieve, but acquiring a cms of some variety, then hacking on that is not a bad way to learn.

I'm not a web UI programmer, although have been at times over the years and still do some professional work in that space, but a little while ago I created a website for a friend's business as a hobby project for me.

I chose to use Drupal, which is a php based cms, and used a paas called pantheon. https://pantheon.io/docs/articles/getting-started/

The good thing about this approach was that I had a fully functional site to start with, built with reasonably good practices (progressive enhancement etc), and I was able to hack away on it and taught myself some php as I needed to achieve certain things that weren't available out of the box. I found it quite interesting to dig around and see how they structured the site, particularly the css strategies.

Re: Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track?

#60

Post by apapli »

I'm a sales guy first and foremost, and develop for fun on evenings and weekends when I have some spare time after my child had gone to bed. 90% for fun, 10% for a small side income.

For what it is worth I taught myself Ruby on Rails and MySQL, however in hindsight I probably should have learned php / MySQL as it seems more prevalent, less "hipster.js" and easier to set up basic dev and prod environments.

I still don't fully understand Ajax or JavaScript, however they are "nice to have's" in my book as they improve the UX, but I can still make an application work without them.

An alternative is to learn how to customise a commercial application. Deluge for Zoho is pretty easy (and appears to be based on php), and Shopify's Liquid is good too (that's based on ruby). I found them both easy to learn.

Hope that helps!

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