So, a user stated he would like to start into web development and become a full stack developer. I wrote a small guide for him.

From my point of view they both provide a solid starting point for your journey. After that, try to outline what you want to achieve because Full Stack Developer man basically mean everything. The most used definition of a full stay dev is one who can provide both “backend” and “frontend” work: backend usually means stuff happening on the server while frontend usually describes stuff happening in the client browser, especially the look and feel. However, this can also mean everything because there are hundreds of programming languages that can be used to build an application.

For the backend I refrain from recommending a specific language here because it just does not make any sense. Instead:

• Search local job offers. You probably want to find a job in your hometown, not on the other side of the world.
• Take a look at trending/important languages. It makes sense because those usually have a lot of job offers.

This gives you a good overview on what you could learn. Any further steps depend on your choice. See this choice like the choice for a car: choose a modern one with a rich featureset and you may get further. But you don’t drive one car for the rest of your life: You probably will learn another language later.

For the frontend I highly recommend to not start with Javascript. There are a lot of evangelists out there who see the face of the world wide web being Javascript alone, which is simply not true. Please do everyone – including yourself – the favor and learn the basics first: HTML and CSS. The web is based on those two technologies and learning both is the first step in becoming a developer who is actually capable of translating a vision, a design, into a webpage. Javascript, to get back to this topic, was made to extend the functionality of HTML and CSS and not the other way round. Nevertheless JS is an important part of the web and can also be used as a backend-language. Learn the basics, learn the language, and not any libraries or frameworks because they come and go. What’s important is that you understand how to use the language itself. Everything else will come by itself. 🙂

This is a crosspost from Hashnode