Become a Junior Developer, Learn Web Development from Scratch

Want to learn JavaScript? We released a companion episode to this one "Learning JavaScript from Scratch" give it a listen!

Topics

• We hear "just code" a lot, but code what?
• What are the steps we should take when coding? Jump right into React?
• Do we need traditional school?
• Should we follow any sort of "miracle routine" of becoming a web developer with a successful 6-figure business in just 6 weeks?

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Why do we hear "just code" all the time?

• "Just code" means that you should be practicing, practice makes perfect
• The problem with telling a complete beginner to "just code" is that they may have no idea where to start, in a sea of options ranging from React through Webflow
• We suggest the pathway: HTML - CSS - JS
  - After learning these vanilla technologies, then we suggest you start learning something related to your pathway (ie a prospective employer may value React skills)
• HTML, CSS, and JS are the foundational technologies of this industry, a foundation that you can build on virtually any way you like

Do we need traditional school?

• Do you need traditional school to learn how to code? 
  - No.
• Do you need traditional school to reach your personal and/or professional goals?
  - Maybe, depends on you.

Educational Pathways

• Bootcamps
  - Fast and focused
  - Often designed to get you a job
  - You hit a curriculum hard and fast with an end goal in mind (ie React junior developer roles at a company)
• Traditional Schools
  - Provide formalities for resumes (ie degrees, diplomas)
  - Can teach you how to learn
  - Give you exposure to other courses and may offer different options as pathways towards graduation (ie you may learn vanilla then have a choice to learn Svelte, or React)
  - Options based on availability: night classes, full-time, online, at your own pace (usually online)
• Self-Taught (Directed)
  - Online courses via services like Scrimba, Udemy, FreeCodeCamp
  - May provide some sort of formality (ie certification of completion that some workplaces may acknowledge)
• Self-Taught (Self-Directed)
  - You teach yourself the skills through research, videos, and more
  - You need to be disciplined in order to keep on track and not skip out on too many learning days
  - You'll need to know how to learn things yourself (no teacher to give you bite-sized bits of curriculum)
  - There are no formalities unless specifically seeked out (ie Webflow certification, W3Schools Certification)
  - Always ensure that the certifications mentioned above will provide your career value before jumping into them as they can be expensive to participate in
  - Even if you do go to school (ie college) you'll always have more to learn. This additional learning is typically self-taught (self-directed)

Beyond the miracle learning pathways

There are a lot of "follow these 10 steps to success" whether or not these have some validity it's harder to change your entire lifestyle on a dime to participate in some of these workflows.

Start with HTML

• Learn what tags are and how to write them
• Learn the structure of the average webpage
  - DOCTYPE, HTML, HEAD, BODY
  
• Layout a page however you'd like, to start learning how the DOM flows naturally
• Take note of where certain aspects go
  - For example, link tags in the HEAD section
• Once you complete your web page and understand the flow + skeletal structure then you can move onto CSS
  - If you have any confusion or doubt (you probably will) I recommend continuing making pages with just HTML until you start to feel a little comfortable.
  - If you move onto CSS too early, you can always come back to this step and practice HTML more

Move on to CSS

• Learn the basics of classes and IDs
• Understanding basic properties
  - Box Model: padding, margin, width, height
  - Text: color, alignment, decorations
  - Layouts: display flex (I'd stick with flex only for now)
• Take your HTML skeleton mentioned above and start to style it they way you'd like, exercising your new knowledge of classes, IDs, and basic properties
• Keep on trying to design your skeleton, looking up different ways to get through any struggles
  - This will teach you how some problems have multiple approaches in CSS
  - It will also teach you how to solve some problems with properties you've likely never seen before
• Continue practicing your CSS on your skeleton and/or multiple pages until you start feeling comfortable with it