So You Want to be a Web Developer
Begin Here if You Want to be a Web Developer
If you just started reading our techno geeky blog, then you, my friend, are in for a treat. We’re about to embark on a journey into the world of web development with our new weekly blog series entitled “So You Want to be a Web Developer”.
In this series, we’re going to start you off from scratch and assume you don’t know anything about web development with the hopes of eventually turning you into a competent and skilled developer.
Today’s blog post is meant to serve as a primer into the world of web development. We’ll discuss some basic concepts and the benefits of learning these skills as well as how they can help you in everyday life.
What is Web Development
Web development is basically what it sounds like. It is developing websites using web-based technologies. You may often hear the term “Web Design” used interchangeably with “Web Development”, but they are actually two very different things.
Web Design is the process of designing the look and feel of websites. It involves a designer creating a design based upon the brief or concept that the site is about. This often involves coming up with wireframes, drafts, and mockups for each page the website will have.
Web development on the other hand is all about the functionality behind the website. It’s the process of using web technologies like HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), Javascript, and other backend languages and technologies to create a functional website that people can use.
Why Learn Web Development
Learning web development can be very empowering. It enables you to take an idea or concept for a website and build it yourself. There is of course nothing wrong with hiring developers to build a website for you. However, hiring costs money and not everyone has extra cash on hand for that.
Not only can you take your idea and make it a reality using web development, but having these skills also make you eligible and desirable for jobs in these fields. Some web developers make anywhere between $70k and $150k per year in this field depending on their skill set and level of expertise.
Another great aspect of learning web development is that it gets your feet wet in the world of programming. There are tons of different programming languages out there, some related to the web, while others are general-purpose languages. The cool thing about programming is that once you learn one language, the others become much easier to pick up and learn as well. Programming languages usually differ on syntax and protocol, but other than that the base concepts are usually the same across the board. We’ll talk more about programming and the cool things you can do with it later on in the series.
Tools of the Trade
When people browse the web, they use something called a web browser. Considering that you’re reading this blog post, we’re going to assume you already know what a web browser is. When it comes to building websites, developers spend quite a bit of time buried in a web browser. In fact, web developers often use multiple web browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and Microsoft Edge just to name a few) for testing to make sure that their websites work in all the main browsers.
In order to start your journey into web development, you’re going to need just two pieces of software to kick things off.
- A Web Browser (of your choice).
- A Text Editor (of your choice).
You can use whatever web browser and text editor that you like, but throughout this series, we’re going to be using Google Chrome for our browser and Sublime Text for our editor.
Conclusion
So now that you have a good idea about what web development is all about as well as the tools you’ll need to get started, you’re almost ready to dive into the meat and potatoes and get started building your first websites.
In the next lesson, we’ll go more in-depth on concepts and introduce you to the three super important technologies used in building websites.
