How to become a Web Developer in 2021

How do you become a Web Developer in 2021?

In this post I’ll tell you what I would do.

There’s SO MUCH STUFF that it’s hard to learn it all in an order that makes sense. Sometimes you learn things in silos and then you connect the dots. Plus, things change all the time and it’s hard to figure out what’s still worth learning.

I’ll try my best to give a good structure.

Coincidentally this is the same structure I use in my bootcamps. The next edition of the bootcamp will be in Q2 2022 and will contain the first part of this program. The advanced bootcamp will take place in Q3 2022 and will contain the second part.

Learn the basics of the Web, the Web fundamentals. Things like what is the Internet, what is the Web, how network requests work.

How HTTP work, how HTML pages are distributed from a server to your browser.

Learn what a server is.

Learn how the browser works.

Learn the basics of HTML.

How HTML pages are structured.

Build some pages with plain HTML.

Codepen is a good option to start.

Download VS Code and get comfortable using it to edit your code on your computer.

Learn what is Git and what is GitHub.

Learn to use Git to track changes in your HTML files.

Create an account on GitHub, create a repository and host your work on there.

Download the GitHub Desktop app and get comfortable using it to push new revisions of your code.

Learn what CSS is, and its basics.

Use CSS to style the HTML pages you built previously.

Keep exercising HTML and CSS until you feel comfortable.

Learn how to use the browser developer tools.

Keep exploring new things in CSS and HTML. Go from the typography stuff, colors and fonts, and gradually introduce the box model, CSS grid, flexbox, responsive design, dark mode. Learn about semantic HTML.

Learn how to deploy your sites to Netlify.

Learn Tailwind CSS. You got the CSS basics, now learn how the industry is moving forward using CSS in a more digestible way using this framework.

Start with JavaScript. Learn the basics first. Do many little projects and small applications to help you figure out everything. You need to breathe JavaScript and become a master.

Functions. Objects. Arrays. Loops. Conditionals. Callbacks. Promises. Async/Await. Closures. Recursion. Modules. That’s just the start.

Learn what is the DOM. Learn how to interact with the DOM from JavaScript.

Learn the Fetch API and how to use it to perform network requests.

Learn Node.js and how to create a REST API so you can communicate from the browser to the server. Learn about GET and POST.

Learn how to deploy this API somewhere on the Internet. Use this API in one app.

Learn how to handle data.

It’s time to learn a frontend framework, because handling data starts to become complicated. Learn React. It’s the most popular, has the most tutorials, it’s future proof, easier to find a job.

Learn how to do all the apps you did in JavaScript, this time in React.

Learn Next.js to help you create sites with React

Create some sites. Deploy them on Vercel.

Learn how to use a database. MongoDB is a good choice. PostgreSQL is another good one.

Learn how to interface with a database through Next.js and Prisma.

Learn about authentication. Learn how to do authentication with Next.js and provide private pages available after login.

Keep creating different sites to practice.

Keep improving.

Start working on a project you care about.

Might be an app people will pay for in the future, might be something you put out for free.

Just start.