Roadmap to Becoming a Web Developer in 2019

Web Development in 2019

Web development is an ever growing field which has surpassed all expectations. Social media platforms such as FaceBook, twitter, instagram have boomed the web development industry and are also responsible for the rapid rise in the demand for web development professionals. Many large organizations like Facebook and Google make their own custom frameworks or libraries which are built for their own ease and keeping in mind the problems that these companies faced. An example of this kind of library and frameworks would be ReactJs from Facebook and Angular from Google.

Thanks to these large organizations, there is continuous development and betterment happening for the web. New libraries are released every week if not everyday. This means that the job of a web developer is every learning and growing. 2019 has proven to be another enchanting and productive year for web development. Some new trends are seen in terms of modernization of web applications, more and more companies are focusing on delivering quality built with least package size. This helps your applications perform more swiftly. For experienced web developers the job market has increased just like it increases every year, and experienced web developers are high in demand as well.

For beginners who have just started with web developer certifications or any online bootcamp, this is a great time to dive into web development. We are currently at a phase where a new trend in the world of web development is just about to happen and we will get to witness a lot of technological advancements in this field as well. As more companies are focusing on delivering builds that perform better than the competitors built of a similar application. This puts the focus of developers from all across the globe on newer web development trends.

How to get started with web development

To get started with web development all you need is a good internet connection. There is a lot of material available online even for free that you can browse and learn from. IF you are starting with web development pitch any area you like and starting searching tutorials for it online. These areas of web development can be frontend, backend, or UI design.

The frontend developer focuses on getting the user interactivity with the application right, this includes all the general functionality that a user performs while interacting with the web application. The backend developer focuses more on the data side of the application, like setting up databases making CRUD operations and providing API’s for these operations. And the UI designer basically focuses on the user interface and design aspects of the application. Any person who wants to become a web developer with mostly fall into one of these three categories. In the start before picking any one of these categories a beginner should try to explore and learn more as to what field might fit him the best. Once you get the general idea about which field fits your personality then comes the training. You can opt in for any web developer certifications or initially you can get started by searching some tutorials for beginners, either one will do just fine. Initially your goal shall not be to land a good job in the field but get understanding of the domain and grabbing the starting level skillset. W3school is a great platform for beginners to get started, they also have a live code editor and many simple code snippets that you can get started with right away. After you have gotten enough knowledge as a beginner than you can go for intermediate level certifications or tutorials.

Basic skills you’ll need

Some skills are basic that you will need to become any kind of web developer. When working as a web developer mostly people are working in teams so it is important to understand all aspects of the project at hand even if some areas of the application is just not your concern. It is always better to have an overall understanding of what’s going on in the project and also this helps you be available for others if they need you to quickly fix anything.

Some of the basic skills you will require as a web developer are

1. Templating (HTML)

2. Styling (CSS)

3. Any client side language (Javascript)

4. Any server side language (PHP, C#, .NET)

5. Source Control (GIT)

6. Project/Time management (JIRA)

 

What it means to be a Professional web developer

A professional web developer is distinguished from a novice or beginner web developer based on his/her skillset, productivity, code quality, time management, skill sharing and problem solving capabilities. Whenever we talk about a professional developer the fist thing that we expect is someone who is given a list of tasks to carry out and produce results and they do these tasks with minimum damage to the existing code and also within the given time period.

Mostly hourly rate of more experienced developers is high as compared to beginners. This is because companies have already carried out some kind of work with them and have given them positive feedback. In the field of web development, bugs are a common thing. Your application might become unavailable at anytime due to some server being down or some bug in your code. A professional developer knows this kind of mishaps even the major ones are a part of the job, they do occur from time to time, you fix them and things start working again. A quality that is seen in the personality of professional web developers is that they keep a cool head even when everything is broken or busted, they break big problems into small ones and focus on one at a time.

Experienced in any field is gained overtime, only the basics can be taught in web development. But becoming a professional web developer totally depends on your commitment to this art. If you enjoy programming then the sky’s the limit for your growth in this field, but you don’t enjoy what you are doing then you are probably either doing

something wrong or are in the wrong place. That being said 2019 is a great time to get started on your journey of becoming a web developer, and in the years to come it will most likely not be a bad decision if you choose to become a web developer.