My Journey to Becoming a Web Developer and Beyond

[StillGrindin']

I'm going to be upfront: there's no big numbers to get excited over, no simple tips and tricks that will make you rich. This is a process thread with a 5+ year plan that will begin with a documented skill acquisition process, and ideally end with closing major deals focusing on brand strategy and market positioning for Fortune 500's. And in the process, I'll be documenting my journey from 0-100, and the resources that I've used to acquire the skills necessary to move forward to my goals, sharing the bumps along the way and strategies I've used to resolve them. I'll probably break things up into stages, each stage being a new thread as I progress further along my journey.

Road Map to Becoming a Front-End Web Developer​

Stage 1: Basic Skill Acquisition

• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• React
• Bootstrap (weekend endeavor)

Stage 1.5: Acquiring Freelance Work

• Develop a body of work, and relationships with local business and entrepreneurs
• Maximize value and return for clients, by optimizing their online presence to get more business in the door
• Marketing Skill Acquisition (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, SEO, etc)

Stage 2: Becoming Employed in the Field

• Provides an exit from my current toxic work environment
• Earn while I learn
• Develop necessary connections in the industry
• Gain experience working with high value clients
• Provides an opportunity for me to focus on the back-end and acquiring other skill sets necessary for my future business
• Most efficient way to learn (vs part-time after another job)

Current Skill Stack

• Photography
• Editing in Lightroom and Adobe Premier
• Some Photoshop (my weakness compared to Lightroom) and some After Effects
• Experience doing full color grade and correction on videos
• Experience doing full edits of raw photos
• Beginner level C and Python (could be relevant later for back-end, web applications, and web assembly)

 

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[youngdex]

I'm going to be upfront: there's no big numbers to get excited over, no simple tips and tricks that will make you rich. This is a process thread with a 5+ year plan that will begin with a documented skill acquisition process, and ideally end with closing major deals focusing on brand strategy and market positioning for Fortune 500's. And in the process, I'll be documenting my journey from 0-100, and the resources that I've used to acquire the skills necessary to move forward to my goals, sharing the bumps along the way and strategies I've used to resolve them. I'll probably break things up into stages, each stage being a new thread as I progress further along my journey.

Road Map to Becoming a Front-End Web Developer​

Stage 1: Basic Skill Acquisition

• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• React
• Bootstrap (weekend endeavor)

Stage 1.5: Acquiring Freelance Work

• Develop a body of work, and relationships with local business and entrepreneurs
• Maximize value and return for clients, by optimizing their online presence to get more business in the door
• Marketing Skill Acquisition (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, SEO, etc)

Stage 2: Becoming Employed in the Field

• Provides an exit from my current toxic work environment
• Earn while I learn
• Develop necessary connections in the industry
• Gain experience working with high value clients
• Provides an opportunity for me to focus on the back-end and acquiring other skill sets necessary for my future business
• Most efficient way to learn (vs part-time after another job)

Current Skill Stack

• Photography
• Editing in Lightroom and Adobe Premier
• Some Photoshop (my weakness compared to Lightroom) and some After Effects
• Experience doing full color grade and correction on videos
• Experience doing full edits of raw photos
• Beginner level C and Python (could be relevant later for back-end, web applications, and web assembly)

I like your vision and idea. Excited to see how your journey takes you to your goals.
I'm planning to do something similar as well, do you have any programming experience/background?

 

[StillGrindin']

Educational Resources
​

FreeCodeCamp

I played around with this before joining the forums, back in 2018, and I thought it was the end-all-be-all of sources, until I hit some challenges and had trouble with recall due to the sandbox environment. I think it's good for building a foundation for other materials, and the challenges are useful, but I wouldn't put my stake in this hill. I prefer working with my own IDE since it simulates a real-life workflow.


The Odin Project

Out of all of the hands-off free materials, this one is my personal favourite so far. You learn Git and how to push it from the command line (important for building a portfolio and professional workflow), you use your own IDE (not limited to a sandbox), and it pulls from a wider variety of materials, building a better base of information in my opinion. TOP > FCC by far, for me anyway.


Udemy

This is my favourite source thus far. Good courses have numerous projects in them to help build a portfolio and give experience trouble-shooting in real-time I'm a major fan of Brad Traversy's courses, which have done more for my HTML and CSS than any other source, while helping to optimize my workflow in VS Code..

Modern HTML and CSS From the Beginning

I always take the time to break code if I don't understand it, troubleshoot, and go above and beyond with the projects so it isn't a cookie-cutter website.

Next up on the docket for me

Advanced CSS and SASS


Better Understanding Flexbox and Grid

Having trouble understanding the difference between Justify-content and align-content? Align-content and align-items? Flex wrap and flex flow? Order? Etc. This is a great game to dial in positioning quick. I like to warm up my brain with this one before coding.

Flexbox Froggy
Grid Garden



Why so much focus on HTML and CSS?

It's the foundation of everything on the web! Doesn't matter if you're using a CMS like Wordpress or a framework like Bootstrap, if your HTML and CSS sucks, so does the website. I see a lot of process cheaters. They don't take the time to build a foundation in HTML and CSS, and learn important things like color theory. You can spot these designers a mile a way. A bunch of bootstrap haphazardly thrown together, colors clashing everywhere, poor usability. They're cheap as hell, but so is there work, and so are the results (poor conversion).


How to Stand Out From the Crowd?

By building a proper foundation in HTML, CSS and Javascript, then using the right tools for the job, based on the client. Some clients don't want to spend a dime on their website, they rather spend more money on cigarettes than their website. They rather spend more money on Starbucks than their website. The website is the first thing a prospective client sees when researching a company. If a client values their Starbucks more than their business, they have a serious value problem. They're not invested in their business, and in turn, I don't want their business. My focus will be on clients that are invested and value their business and time, because I'm invested in mine, and I want to get results. That's my mindset. So I'm not even concerned about process cheaters and the businesses that seek them out. That's why I'm investing in the process, so I can better create value and deliver results.

 

[lobo]

Hey! I'm also learning to code. I'm about 8 months into the process. I'll keep up with your thread

 

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[StillGrindin']

I like your vision and idea. Excited to see how your journey takes you to your goals.
I'm planning to do something similar as well, do you have any programming experience/background?

A little. I did computer engineering throughout high school, created some circuit boards (proper etched ones), that communicated with the computer via serial port and ran BASIC code. Have created some basic terminal applications in C, and have some experience with Linux (been an on and off user for 15 years). I have a decent understanding of how things work under the hood hardware wise, but I never did anything at a college level. I've studied some college materials on Comp Sci on the side for fun. Nothing close to remotely professional in today's environment.

I'm not green, but a lot of material is buried in the subconscious graveyard. But it's a process.....so, in the words of Kimi Raikkonen: Mwoah!

 

[youngdex]

A little. I did computer engineering throughout high school, created some circuit boards (proper etched ones), that communicated with the computer via serial port and ran BASIC code. Have created some basic terminal applications in C, and have some experience with Linux (been an on and off user for 15 years). I have a decent understanding of how things work under the hood hardware wise, but I never did anything at a college level. I've studied some college materials on Comp Sci on the side for fun. Nothing close to remotely professional in today's environment.

I'm not green, but a lot of material is buried in the subconscious graveyard. But it's a process.....so, in the words of Kimi Raikkonen: Mwoah!

That's great, good luck to you. Keep us updated on your journey!

 

[MVP..dev]

Hey! I'm also learning to code. I'm about 8 months into the process. I'll keep up with your thread

Which languages/platforms are you learning?

 

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[MVP..dev]

Stage 2: Becoming Employed in the Field

Why work for someone else? Why not start as a web front-end dev freelancer and when you have the experience, learn how to turn it into a business and scale it?

I love your ambition and making your goals public for accountability reasons. The only other thing I'd like to see on your roadmap is some dates.

 

[StillGrindin']

Which languages/platforms are you learning?

Right now, just working on HTML and CSS. More Javascript probably around October, with React around December timeline wise. If things move quicker, I'll be happy with that too. No platforms like Wordpress. I'm not against it, but I think using it too early in the game hinders development long-term. I believe it's important to be able to whiteboard an idea, and then be able to quickly translate that into a skeleton design for the site. My goal is be able to type out the overall structure quickly without having to think about it too much, and know how to create the proper sections, div's, nested divs, and classes and id's to get the job done right. If I jump into Wordpress right away and bang out templates, I miss out on that crucial learning experience that helps me stand out from the crowd (patterns of thought). That's why there's no discussion of Wordpress in my roadmap.

I will learn Bootstrap later down the road (I'm exicted about Bootstrap 5), but not before I have a good grasp on a CSS pre-processor like SASS. I think the Bootstrap themes are pretty awesome, and long-term it will probably be my Wordpress for the average client. But before I move into it, it's important for me to be able to provide a lean Bootstrap experience. I could make a separate post on the importance of load times on SEO and ranking, and some major pitfalls of the typical bloated Bootstrap experience and how these Bootstrap developers are inadvertently hurting their clients. And I probably will one day in the future.

I can do things like talk about my IDE, developer tools, plugins, etc if anyone is interested in that.

Why not stay freelance? I want to kill bigger (I really like this term). Bigger than just doing web pages, and I believe the best way to do that is work with a company that provides high value to high value clients. Gives me the inside experience that I believe will be beneficial to my longer term goals.

Long term goal is to have a business to scale, with a team of creatives in-house that can provide major branding strategy solutions that can solve problems in the six to eight figure range. That's the dream goal. To me, that's my porn right there lol.

 

[lobo]

Which languages/platforms are you learning?

I started with Ruby/Rails for backend. Gonna learn JS/React/Bootstrap for frontend

 

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[StillGrindin']

I started with Ruby/Rails for backend. Gonna learn JS/React/Bootstrap for frontend

How do you like Rails for the backend? My understanding is that it is the best for prototyping, but for whatever reason, the industry seems to be all-in on Node.js.

 

[journeyman]

Excellent! Surprisingly, I found it actually easier to get an entry-level job where you get paid to learn essentially (just emailed startups offering to help with some of their tickets) rather than freelancing from the get-go. I've come to believe that freelancing is better suited to when you have a more solid skillset you can sell. OF course, both can work just fine, just keep it in mind as an alternative.

 

[Stargazer]

This is a process thread with a 5+ year plan that will begin with a documented skill acquisition process, and ideally end with closing major deals focusing on brand strategy and market positioning for Fortune 500's.

Quick question.

Your whole thread is about Web Development and how you plan to get there (great ) but what has any of it to do with the above?

Dan

 

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[StillGrindin']

Quick question.

Your whole thread is about Web Development and how you plan to get there (great ) but what has any of it to do with the above?

Dan

Web presence is the most important currency, especially in a post-COVID enconomy where there will be a greater reliance on e-commerce and integration more than ever. There's a lot of emerging technology on the web dev front that I believe will change the way businesses will operate in the future and create opportunities to solve problems in the seven figure and up range. Businesses that leverage these technologies for growth will expand, and the ones that don't adapt will be left behind. So in the long term, what does it have to do with brand strategy? It's the foundation. One pillar, but without it, the house collapses.

Why not go into 'brand strategy" today?

I think most of the brand positioning/ strategy market is full of fake guru's and contrepreneurs that don't really add value or solve problems. A good website can create leads, convert, and get people in the door. Web applications can connect customers to businesses, provide greater value and greater service. It's something I can start quickly since the skill stack is already there . Need professional photos? No problem. Advertising video? I got you. I can offer the full package and then charge based on value.

Long-term, I wouldn't build websites, wouldn't build applications, shoot photos or videos, run ads etc. I would have a team under me doing those things. But today? This is something I can start and eventually scale and pivot. Something I can leverage right now with businesses and entrepreneurs. So that's why I'm focused on web development right now, vs content management, social media agency, or what people think of as brand strategy today.

 

[StillGrindin']

Update

I'll be finishing Modern HTML and CSS From the Beginning by tomorrow morning, and finished around the 1st 100 Basic Javascript lessons on freecodecamp. I was getting pretty burnt out on CSS, so ended up switching to some Javascript to keep the needle moving forward.

Insights so far

• Boy was I naive thinking a 50 hour full-stack bootcamp course would cut the mustard. It's easy to spend 100 hours alone just on HTML and CSS. The CSS rabbit hole never seems to end. I'm trying not to get hung up on it, but there's a lot of little touches that seperate the decent from good, and even more that seperate the great from the rest. Wrapping text around an image, cursor behaviour, filters and gradients, clever use of before and after on selectors, or even just being able to know how to create a set of libraries and utility classes to get the job done and make changes / implementation easier
• Trying to remember the important stuff. Definitely the biggest challenge for me atm. I know this comes down to seat time, but maybe reference notes would help with this a bit.
• Grid is a thorn in my side. Flexbox, no problem. Feels natural. Grid feels alien to me, despite having done several Grid challenges. It's not sticking as well as I'd like. I know seat time is key for this one. With Sub-Grid coming out in the next CSS update, nailing Grid down will be really important.
• I understand why people go down the Wordpress + slap a theme on it route. To design everything from scratch quickly and effectively: you really need to know your craft. And the truth is, the average client on some Freelancer website (like Fiverr) will probably never value the work and skill necessary to do this right. They'd rather pay more for an oil change or brake job than for a website build, and the former is infinitely easier to do than the latter. I don't even think I'd entertain a landing page for anything less than a few hundred bucks. Not from scratch anyway.
• I understand why guys like Fox and Dan are doing 5-10k builds for people. The amount of blood, sweat and tears necessary to get good at this is ridiculous. It costs little upfront in money, but you will pay out the a$$ in sweat equity.

Going Forward

• I'm going to have to learn a CMS like Wordpress if I want to freelance. It's what the market wants in a lot of cases, so I need to get over myself and not be so stubborn about it. Having a really good handle on CSS and Javascript will help a ton with this. I just have a lot of security concerns with Wordpress being hacked. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
• I'm going to have to learn PHP if I do Wordpress. Not crazy about it, but 80% of the webs backend is built with it, so it's great to have in the tool belt anyway.
• Probably going to put the more advanced CSS stuff on hold and delve really deep into Javascript. I expect to put in a solid 500+ hours on this alone. With all of the JS frameworks on the frontend and backend, nailing down Javascript will pay dividends in the future. Everything will be all downhill if I can understand it on a deep level. And the great thing about Javascript is that there is a use case for it everywhere. Desktop software? Electron. Mobile apps for Android and IOS? React Native. Major opportunities in the market for people that cut their teeth on Javascript. I'm really excited about this part. I feel like just designing pages can be a race to the bottom if one isn't smart about it. Now web applications on the other hand? I see people charging serious coin for these, some well into six figures. And it isn't something that is easy to hire for, which makes this a great area to compete in. Will be looking to move in this direction in the future.

For everyone that has made it this far. The Mozilla Developer Network has an amazing Front-end Developer course. It's the most thorough, longest and driest source I've come across (lol), but it explains important concepts in a way better than anything else I have seen so far.