Ask HN: Where to start learning web development in 2017? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where to start learning web development in 2017?

15 pointslaurentdc10 comments

Hi!

My background: formal visual literacy/art instruction, but sadly with little hands-on experience with modern media. Experience in design mostly for print, passion for typography, played with Python and Arduino, done some websites for friends using Bootstrap.

What I'm willing to accomplish: know Bootstrap and modern UI frameworks even better, understand how modern browsers work, study how to write HTML/CSS/Javascript that is up to date with the current standards.

Where do I start? How can I catch up with the new things out there?

Things change so fast and every tutorial I read seems to be either too vague to be useful, or too specific and already outdated.

Thank you all!

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I keep a big list of links to high-quality tutorials on React and related topics ([0]). As part of that list, I have a couple categories that point to info on learning Javascript ([1]), using the new Javascript ES6+ features and syntax ([2]), and understanding what the many modern dev tools do and how they fit together ([3]). That last category also has links to some "suggested learning approach"-type pages.

Hopefully these help!

[0] https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links

[1] https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links/blob/master...

[2] https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links/blob/master...

[3] https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links/blob/master...

What are you more interested in learning, front end or back end development? Only asking since you mentioned Python and Bootstrap can be used/learned with server side rendered pages.

My extremely general advice would be to avoid frameworks until you have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of both JS and HTML for front end stuff. This way you can understand what is happening behind the scenes with these tools.

For back end Python is a great place to start. I would suggest learning some data structures (queue, stack, graph, binary search tree) and implementing them yourself along with some sorting algorithms (insertion, merge, quick, radix). That will give you a pretty decent exposure to the language. Try using Flask for a web framework as it's very simple on it's own and doesn't have as much magic as something like Django.

Hi,

I'm a self-taught web developer and I quit my job in business consultancy and hustled for 11 months before getting my first junior web developer job.

From my experience and numerous talks with other self-taught web devs I would suggest the following: - to start with the "why" and then with the "what" and the "how". What I'm trying to say is that you should start to learn to some extent how the internet works (DNS, http protocols, client/server cycle). - after that you can start with the HTML, CSS and Javascript and learn the plain languages and then the frameworks. I say that because frameworks come and go, but the language from which they stem remain pretty much the same.

If you want to chat more about this topic you can email me at alin.rauta@thebusinessclub.ro

I wish you the best in your endeavour! Alin R.

From scratch... start with the basics, HTML (definitely first), Scripting Language (PHP/Python/whatever), bits of javascript. Don't jump into CSS too early, it just messes with your brain (its very anti-logic compared to HTML and scripting languages). Once you are confident in the scripting add in a database if that's your thing. Once you are adept at getting data in and out from the server then look into prettifying things up with CSS.

A good beginning reference for CSS is "Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide" by Charles Wyke-Smith, good basics. Problem with CSS is there is a lot of crap overload out there mainly because of browser variation - strive to find the simpler solutions.

If you know python and want to learn web development, work through http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000754

If you are looking to understand CSS layout and want to trade focused time for a solid mental model, check out http://book.mixu.net/css/

Real Python covers both client (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and server (Python) and the focus is on learning through building.

Note: I am the co-founder/Author

https://realpython.com

Start web development by using http://www.freecodecamp.com

I learnt web development from here. It'll teach you all you need to know to become a full stack web developer. It takes time but is totally worth it.

Enjoy!

Hi, I simply recommend you to learn by doing. You can start with https://www.codecademy.com

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