If you are interested in a career in Software development and are thinking of a career path, then this article is for you. If you are already familiar with JavaScript, then you might want to check out my article on TypeScript.
Suppose you are interested in a career (or a career switch) in Software Development and you are considering Web Development, especially in the Front-end, here is my proposed path:
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
HTML
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and it is the standard markup language for Web pages. i.e. It is the language for describing the structure of Web pages.
Hypertext means that the document contains links that allow the reader to jump to other places in the document or to another document altogether.
A Markup Language is a way that computers speak to each other to control how text is processed and presented.
To do its work, HTML uses two things: tags and attributes. The latest version of HTML is known as HTML5.
A basic HTML code will look like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a Heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>Learn more about HTML here.
CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and it is the language we use to style our HTML documents. It describes how HTML elements should be displayed. The latest version of CSS is CSS3.
A basic CSS code will look like this:
body {
background-color: lightblue;
}
h1 {
color: white;
text-align: center;
}
p {
font-family: verdana;
font-size: 20px;
}The styles inside the {...} are applied to the respective HTML elements targeted, i.e. body, h1, and p .
Learn more about CSS here.
HTML and CSS are two of the core technologies for building Web pages. HTML provides the structure of the page, while CSS provides the (visual and aural) layout, for a variety of devices.
That brings us to the next core technology for building web pages and to the focus of our discussion.
JavaScript
JavaScript is a programming language used for programming web pages. It is a scripting language for web pages.
More technically, JavaScript is a lightweight, interpreted, or just-in-time compiled programming language with first-class functions. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm, single-threaded, dynamic language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and declarative styles.
Learn more about JavaScript syntax here.
What can JavaScript be used for?
JavaScript is most known for being a web-based language because it’s native to the web browser. The web browser can naturally understand the language, like how a native English speaker can naturally understand English.
Here are some of the places where we can use JavaScript:
- Creating Interactive Websites
JavaScript makes web pages dynamic. HTML and CSS are only capable of creating static pages that can be styled but not interactive aside from hyperlinks.
2. Building Applications
With JavaScript's extensive collection of frameworks (such as React, React Native, Angular, Vue, and Node.js ) developers can efficiently build apps for mobile and web.
3. Developing Engaging Games
JavaScript is frequently used to create in-browser games. Developers use JavaScript to create 2D and 3D puzzles, role-playing games, racing games, platform games, and more.
Conclusion
As a next step, after mastering HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you might want to move on to a library like Reactjs if you are interested in the frontend or Nodejs if you are interested in the backend.
Thus, whether you plan to specialize in front-end, back-end, or full-stack development, JavaScript is a crucial programming language for any web developer.
If you are looking to build applications on a large scale, then you might want to consider TypeScript (a superset of JavaScript) on the front-end.
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