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Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

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Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#31

Post by JChase2 »

sudofail wrote: post #12

I'm currently teaching my brother web development and I guarantee if I were to show him this, he'd just quit. This is way too much information. All a beginner needs to know is JS and the basics of HTML/CSS/SQL. If they have a mentor, the mentor should draw out and explain how frontend, backend and databases relate, and the general lifecycle of a request to a webpage. That's all you really need to start building stuff…

Ya, I've got a CS degree and I'm slowly learning web dev. Learning JS is really nice, but I feel like I need to know so many frameworks and other things, not to mention algorithms, to land an actually decent job. Idk how accurate this is but most requirements on job sites seem fairly thorough.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#33

Post by aasasd »

Notably even the frontend path omits anything on how websites should function―even though it's in a different field if you're for strict ultra-specialization, it's still recommended to learn how to not accidentally make sites that are hostile to users. Arguably, it should be learned before the programming part, so it's ingrained from the start.

E.g. for me the defining text is Jakob Nielsen's “Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity,” which probably didn't lose any value in the time since publication, because humans don't change so fast.

P.S. I'm also of firm belief that the proximity principle is by far the most important tool of graphic design and that everyone should learn to see and use it. To, ahem, not make diagrams where everything is lumped together.

(I'm a backend coder, by the way.)

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#34

Post by jaredcwhite »

I was convinced for a while there as I scrolled down that this was a joke. "Good parody!" I thought to myself. Then I realized to my horror this is actually serious.

As a web developer since 1997, currently working in both the Rails & JAMstack spaces, I can assure any and all beginners out there you don't need to know anything about at least 50% of this stuff, probably closer to 70%.

I also deeply resent the notion that you have to "choose a path." Depending on the task at hand and what I'm trying to accomplish, I'm working on the backend, the frontend, and/or the devops side. I jump between all of those daily. If your stack, website, or web app is so complicated that you simply have no ability to understand how it's built bottom-to-top, back-to-front, and how to deploy it easily, then either (a) you're in a massive team at a gigantic software company, or (b) you're doing it wrong!

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#35

Post by jaredcwhite »

protonimitate wrote: post #30
sudofail wrote: post #12

I'm currently teaching my brother web development and I guarantee if I were to show him this, he'd just quit. This is way too much information. All a beginner needs to know is JS and the basics of HTML/CSS/SQL. If they have a mentor, the mentor should draw out and explain how frontend, backend and databases relate, and the general lifecycle of a request to a webpage. That's all you really need to start building stuff…

It's a good reference resource to have. It's great to see what X technology is, and how it relates to everything else. I would agree that handing this to a beginner would be over kill. This is probably best suited for people who are in the 'I know the basics, but want to know what this technology-of-the-month is and how it fits in to what I already know' stage.

I would posit that it's a valuable skill at this point in time to intentionally not seek out the flavor-of-the-month web technology. I'm of the opinion it's good to wait a year or two before adopting any new framework or technique, because it seems almost all of them are passé within that timeframe. (Case in point: BOY am I glad I never bothered to learn Angular 1!)

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#36

Post by idontgetit12 »

sudofail wrote: post #12

I'm currently teaching my brother web development and I guarantee if I were to show him this, he'd just quit. This is way too much information. All a beginner needs to know is JS and the basics of HTML/CSS/SQL. If they have a mentor, the mentor should draw out and explain how frontend, backend and databases relate, and the general lifecycle of a request to a webpage. That's all you really need to start building stuff…

Maybe your brother needs to learn how to take things one step at a time if this would make him quit at first glance. I don't understand why it's a bad thing to have a consolidated source of information like this, I would have loved to have a detailed roadmap as a beginner. These graphics lays things out very clearly and obviously you don't need to rush through the steps.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#37

Post by sudofail »

JChase2 wrote: post #31
sudofail wrote: post #12

I'm currently teaching my brother web development and I guarantee if I were to show him this, he'd just quit. This is way too much information. All a beginner needs to know is JS and the basics of HTML/CSS/SQL. If they have a mentor, the mentor should draw out and explain how frontend, backend and databases relate, and the general lifecycle of a request to a webpage. That's all you really need to start building stuff…

Ya, I've got a CS degree and I'm slowly learning web dev. Learning JS is really nice, but I feel like I need to know so many frameworks and other things, not to mention algorithms, to land an actually decent job. Idk how accurate this is but most requirements on job sites seem fairly thorough.

I'm planning to introduce react after he has a few small js projects under his belt. I agree vanilla JS is not enough to land a job.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#38

Post by sudofail »

idontgetit12 wrote: post #36
sudofail wrote: post #12

I'm currently teaching my brother web development and I guarantee if I were to show him this, he'd just quit. This is way too much information. All a beginner needs to know is JS and the basics of HTML/CSS/SQL. If they have a mentor, the mentor should draw out and explain how frontend, backend and databases relate, and the general lifecycle of a request to a webpage. That's all you really need to start building stuff…

Maybe your brother needs to learn how to take things one step at a time if this would make him quit at first glance. I don't understand why it's a bad thing to have a consolidated source of information like this, I would have loved to have a detailed roadmap as a beginner. These graphics lays things out very clearly and obviously you don't need to rush through the steps.

You're right, it is valuable to have a resource like this. I guess I was taking issue with the title of the submission. I think something like this is great to introduce to someone who already has begun to get their bearings straight. But if a beginner followed this and spent time learning about "required" skills upfront, like Licenses, or Encodings, or Algorithms, it's just going to blow them off track.

Once they are reasonably experienced and have started to get the lay of the land, something like this can serve as a good mind map.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#39

Post by MuffinFlavored »

sudofail wrote: post #12

I'm currently teaching my brother web development and I guarantee if I were to show him this, he'd just quit. This is way too much information. All a beginner needs to know is JS and the basics of HTML/CSS/SQL. If they have a mentor, the mentor should draw out and explain how frontend, backend and databases relate, and the general lifecycle of a request to a webpage. That's all you really need to start building stuff…

Mentioning SQL means backend which implies they need to understand that a network connection is incoming to a server bound on a port with a method, URL, list of cookies/headers, etc. with the purpose of serving a request with a response

CORS potentially might be worth mentioning to get a beginner familiar with security (why can't I just scrape Facebook cookies from my personal website), yada yada.

I think that's kind of still high level to hold limited attention spans without overwhelming but deep enough to prove that there's a bit more going on beneath the scenes.

I feel most new web developers in those jumpstart "become a programmer in 60 days" classes probably know a bit too much about React and probably not enough about the sockets/IPs/networking serving the static assets. Probably not a requirement on day one, but I bet it might make their first "I have to debug this all the way through the stack" problem less painful.

All hypothetical, at least.

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