Rate my web development learning plan
I’ve been an iOS developer for about 2-3 years. It’s a great platform for indie devs and I’ve had a fair amount of success with launching my own apps. However I want to step up my game and learn web development as well.
I have a little experience with web dev as I’ve been learning it on the side, but I’m still a beginner. I quit my job recently and for the next 3-4 months I want to focus solely on learning web development and creating a product I dreamed up recently.
So I put together a list of technologies & languages & frameworks I want to learn. My end goal with this is to find a job in web development (until I can become a full-time indie:)) and be able to build products from the ground up.
I picked technologies that seem to be very popular & widely-adopted in the web dev scene. Note: I’m focusing on front-end but I want to learn some basic backend as well.
Let me know what you guys think and if I left out something important or if there are better alternatives for certain things.
Frontend:
- HTML
- CSS, SASS
- JS, DOM
- TypeScript
- web pack
- BootStrap
- React
- Redux
- Next.js
Backend:
- NodeJS
- npm
- creating REST APIs
- Websockets
- Express
- MongoDB, Mongoose
I think too that your list is too long.
Here's my two cents:
The language really doesn't matter, except maybe for JS since it's everywhere on the Frontend. I would not recommend it for the backend though, it's pretty wide as a language (understand: you have many different ways to solve the same problem, and it can be very confusing for a beginner).
It will be difficult, but I think you'll progress fast if you follow that. I wrote an article how to learn a programming language, if you want more info:
https://thevaluable.dev/how-to-learn-programming-language/
right, thanks for the advice. I guess you're right about the scope, I think I'll keep the backend stuff to a minimum for now so I can be more focused on frontend. And yeah I'll be building projects along the way to apply everything I learn
That's a good list. My only concern is that it's a lot of stuff to take in all at once.
I started learning web development about a year ago to build my own web app, and took a similar path but more simplified:
Frontend:
(Not using Typescript... will start adding it if I feel it's needed. CRA means I don't have to worry about Webpack configuration for now).
Backend:
This stack might not be the best for what you want to build. But for a web app, so far, it's working out great for me. Firebase might not be the best choice if your goal is to get a job. But for building your own thing, it simplifies backend work dramatically. I spend about 95% of my efforts on building the product (i.e front end) and about 5% of my time working with (or learning how to use) Firebase on the backend.
Yeah good points. The truth is I already have a basic understanding of almost all of these technologies, except for React, Redux, TypeScript and Next.js, since I've taken 1 full stack + 1 Node.JS course on Udemy. I just haven't used that knowledge much since, because I was working on my apps so it's begun to fade. This time I want to go full speed on learning though.
My idea is that I want to have a solid understanding of the foundations (pretty much the stuff you mentioned in your comment) and then the rest I just want to get a feel for but not go in depth to not get lost in it. This is just to have an overview of what's out there and where I can go next if I want to go even deeper.
And yeah I'll most likely use Firebase for my next product as well, because backend is not my focus now and it'd just be too much to handle.
Thanks for the tips!
You're welcome. Best of luck to you, and let me know if you have any more questions about my dev stack down the road!
I think you’re right on the money here. React + node is the most popular stack, so learning it right away makes sense.
I highly recommend Frontend Masters, if you’re serious about learning. The subscription isn’t cheap but the quality is outstanding.
Also, I’m building a product that helps is especially useful for developers who are learning new technologies, I’d love it if you could check it out and let me know your thoughts!
I actually found some pretty good Udemy courses but might give Frontend Masters a try as well. Sure, if I can get the free beta version I'd love to try 😁
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Thanks, these look great! There's definitely no lack of good resources when it comes to learning web dev. Picking one and sticking with it is the hardest thing though 😅
What about Ruby on Rails, is ror dead now or what?
From what I get it's far from dead but it's slowly losing popularity. At the same time people say it's more beginner friendly than Node. As a beginner I'm just hesitant to go with something that's past its peak.
I mentioned it because from your post it seemed like your goal was to quickly get a specific idea built. In which case ROR is probably one of the faster safer options with tons of people and code you can use to speed things up. However, if a marketable resume or set of skills is an important consideration, ROR is pretty old. Everything after 1-2 years seems old.