Thoughts on Web Dev
In the beginning of 2019 I started studying web development on my own. Not an easy task if you work and do stuff to make a living. You're tired, you forget what you've studied yesterday and get frustrated.
As many do, I feel empathetic for people running over the same experience, and think my testimony could be helpful for some of you.
Background
After graduation, the adventure.
In March 2019 I was a fresh graduate bored of books and looking for new people, new experiences, new everything. So I started backpacking around the globe. Being a chemist by training, I thought it easy to get temporary contracts for chemistry-jobs on the go. That was the ideal case.
Reality plays hard though, and the real case was far from ideal. To get a skilled job you do need a reasonable background (i.e job experience). This is a bit harder if you try your luck abroad. And I didn't have any job experience. Then I started doing whatever I found to make a living.
The first job was as a waiter. Later on I worked as a barista (learnt on the go). After saving some money and about 3 months off the start, I carefully resigned. To make the money last I set up a few volunteering jobs. For those of you who never heard about it before, volunteerings consist on doing simple tasks in exchange for bed and food. It's normally 2 to 4 hours a day and you can choose what to do with the rest of the day. In my spare time I started studying web development.
After 4 months (roughly) I knew the very basics of web development.
A learning path
Show me, the way...
The hard task is not to get a book or a document about a topic but to get the right one. I'll just show you what worked out for me.
The first face to web development was at the Oxfordshire County Library. There were monthly meetings aimed to learn through Freecodecamp, an amazing online community where you can learn coding for free.
That was my main source of knowledge. Some other amazing sources were these Youtube channels:
- Traversymedia: for intros to any web dev topic.
- Kevin Powell: for CSS and Design in general.
- DevEd: for animations and creative thinking.
Freecodecamp (FCC from now on) does also have a forum where you can post your questions. For more specific questions there is Stackoverflow. There are also chat platforms. I didn't use these much till 2020 when someone showed me Riot a web client for Matrix.
If you want to know exactly what software you need to start off, check out this Mozilla docs page.
Some Humble Advices
The learning path is endless. So we have to build up websites as we go. Do active learning, build projects, avoid too much passive learning. I recommend to learn HTML, the basics of CSS and start coding right away. In my personal case I tried out some of FCC's projects, emulated mozilla docs for my own stuff, copied websites. I'd recommend you to try those out too.
I'd then, let's say on the 5th month, got into Vanilla Javascript. Try to become productive before becoming good at it. But if you repeat 3 lines of code instead of using a for-loop that's perfectly fine. You can always refactor or edit your code later on. One of the main reasons to learn javascript is animations.
Looking for a Job
This is a tough part. I haven't find a job, not even as a freelancer. The reason being that there are many advanced coders and many company's prerequisites for a junior entry-level job are awfully high.
That's one of the reasons to write and share this blogpost, as there seems to be a misconception out there about how easy it is to find a job in web development. However, I've always find coding worth my time, it's a beautiful hobby much like music, reading or doing sport. I hope you will do too. Surely jobs will show up in due time.
