Web development: Beginner’s guide

Welcome to the intriguing journey of web development, where the technologies evolve faster than they stay longer. If you are a beginner, then you will be overwhelmed by the ton of technologies that web development has to offer.

First of all, it is important to understand which type of developer you want to be or which part of web development interests you the most — which depends completely on the individual’s will and hard work.

Web developers can be classified into three groups:

1. Front-end web developer

These are the people responsible for look and feel of a website. They are also responsible to see how the website works on a wide range of devices from a mobile to a large screen desktop. They are the people who attract a potential customer to the company. The look and feel they immerse in a website is what makes the difference. These people are to be creative and innovative.

2. Back-end web developer

These are the people responsible for handling all the business logic and directly deal with the databases. They are often responsible for server configurations and making the whole data flow from and towards the application smooth. These people should be analytical and good at logic building.

3. Full-stack web developer

These are the heroic people having control over all the front-end and back-end of the application. Though they are not the master of all the technologies, they have sufficient knowledge to make whole things work. They are acquainted with all the technologies you could come across in your front-end and back-end journey. Many companies prefer hiring a full-stack web developer because of their huge, evolving knowledge base and due to the flexibility they possess. But with great powers come great responsibilities.

No matter what category you belong to, it is important to get yourself acquainted with all the technologies on the other side of the developer journey.

Technologies for the front-end web development

Hyper Text Markup Language(HTML)

HTML is one of the most fundamental technologies for a web-developer. It is the barebone of a website. It is the technology that helps us organize our content on a website, be it a form or a paragraph or an image or a video…

HTML has been through many changes, the latest version of HTML is HTML5 which is supported by all the major web browsers and has all the tools to manage the content of a modern web application.

If you get yourself done with HTML then you are good to go with other technologies.

Cascading style sheets (CSS)

As the name suggests, it is the technology which deals with styling websites. It is also a fundamental and one of the most important technology to master as a front-end web developer.

HTML is not inherently good at styles, even though it tends to provide some basic styling but it will never suffice our hunger for an attractive website.

Many people struggle with CSS, so it is often suggested to learn the basics of CSS and then get started with one of the CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, Tailwind, Material CSS and so on, which tends to make the work of styling websites a lot easier and enjoyable.

Javascript (JS)

Here comes the big boy, javascript, without it you may not be called as a web-developer. You may create a website which has good content and looks very glamorous but without javascript, your website is not functional. It would be like talking to a dead man.

After you learn it you will understand how we send data across the server and how to make user interactions smooth. The knowledge of javascript will help you learn some of the advanced technologies like React.js, node.js, vue.js, Angular.js etc. It is also one of the most demanding and most in-trend programming languages after python.

Once you get your heads over it, you will enjoy the rest of your programming journey.

These three above mentioned technologies are the pillars on which the whole web-development depends on. If you master these technologies, then the rest of the journey will be a cakewalk.

Tech-stacks

Often time we need to use to a different mixture of technologies based on the demand of project, but most of us tend to use the tech stack standardized by the industry. If you wish to be a full-stack developer, it is recommended to master any of these stacks. Even though there is no hard-core rule to use them as it is, we mostly prefer to use the hybrid stack, i.e., a mixture of two or more tech stacks. Some of the most popular stacks are:

1. MERN(MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js)
2. MEVN(MongoDB, Express.js, Vue.js, Node.js)
3. MEAN(MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, Node.js)
4. LAMP(Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP)
5. JAM(Javascript, API’s, Markup)

If you want to be called as a full-stack developer then you got to master any of the above tech-stacks. These are not just the only tech-stacks, as stated they are used by many companies and are trending. As new technologies emerge, so do the new tech-stacks.