You get to send a letter back in time to your younger, budding web developer self. What do you say?

Joe Castelli
Jul 27, 2017 · 6 min read

As with many trades, the journey to become a developer begins as an intimidating one. You start to read the work of people who’ve been around for some time, and they throw out a lot of industry terms you’ve never heard before. For some, that’s about all it takes to become discouraged.

There’s a bit of uplifting noise out there, but it seems to get less exposure than the articles about the hot new somethingQL database, or the latest Javascript framework getting all the ink. In hopes of reaching an aspiring dev or two with a few more words of encouragement, I decided to take a moment to reflect on some of the things I wish I’d have heard from someone else when I was getting started.

You’ll start small, and grow the tree from there.

This one seems obvious, and maybe it is to some people. But being a naturally holistic thinker, I get distracted if I perceive I’m missing details. If a professor said anything like ‘…but we’ll get to that later,’ I lost my mind. I’m the type who doesn’t like deliberately blacking out related tangents.

In the world of web development, there are a LOT of places you can start. If you’ve got experience with object-oriented dev in desktop software, you might prefer to pick a backend web technology to specialize in. But for someone a bit greener, that’s obviously a horrible place to start. But, as the well Internet-ed Chinese proverb goes, ‘The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.’

So when it comes to starting, I suggest the approximate path I took — start by learning frontend development. Build a basic site, get a handle on how HTML, CSS and Javascript all work together. Then you can learn how to put it on top of a content management system, and a whole new world opens up for you.

One of my first ‘real’ web projects involved a small shop started by other college kids. One of them, who I believe still works for Wordpress, convinced me it was very easy to make a Wordpress theme from scratch, especially if you already know the coding basics (which I did). Once you’ve got the frontend stuff in a comfortable place, take a look at building a Wordpress theme from scratch. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get started with the handful of files required by Wordpress, and it’s such a great place to start the learning process.

You’ll appreciate fellow developers. Find some.

This is one I sort of knew early on, but never really figured out how to pull off. I’m not even talking about figuring out a mentor or two (which would obviously be great) as much as I’m talking about simply working with other developers on real projects. The benefit of the camaraderie and teamwork here cannot be overstated. I believe it’s important enough that you should be communicating this desire in the internship/job hunting process as something you value.

Several of my early jobs were solo multitool types. I was web guy, marketing guy, advertising guy, design guy, SEO guy, social media guy… you get the idea. While these experiences helped me grow in some ways, my advancement as a true developer suffered. When I got my first job working with another developer, I learned so much in such a small amount of time, and within practical context that helped it all stick.

Even better, I was able to contribute back some of the things I’d learned up to that point. So as a less experienced dev, I was still bringing things to the table and helping my seniors learn new things.

How do we find developer friends? I’d say this journey will be your own, but I can suggest a few ideas.

  • Find a job or internship that puts you with other developers. Many shops are wide open learning opportunities. But a medium-sized corporate gig can end up being a lonely solo opportunity that will offer more general experience.
  • Choose an open source project that you think is cool. Get to know the maintainers, and try to figure out an easier issue or feature you can work on. Obviously, whether you can do this depends on your current skill level, but once you’re comfortable somewhere, try to find a way to get some experience in with other devs on a real project. These days, there are lots of open projects to choose from.
  • Networking. Good old fashioned face-to-face networking is always a good place to start. If you’re more of a social butterfly, this may be your preferred route. Reaching out online via LinkedIn and such isn’t a bad way to go either.

Don’t get intimidated.

Once you get it in your head that nobody was born with any of this knowledge, it becomes easier to approach new things. It’s easy to feel under qualified when getting into something new. Many will tell you his feeling doesn’t entirely go away. Lots of developers will tell you you never truly feel like an expert because you’re always learning new things. But, again, starting is key.

Now, if you’re looking at, say, a Javascript framework and are finding you’re missing a lot of knowledge about Node and NPM, it might be worth taking a step back and getting into those underlying technologies. Sometimes you get away with learning smaller chunks of said underlying tech as you go, but not always.

This is another one of those things you start to get a feel for. We don’t always have the luxury of stepping back and investing a lot of time in the broader details of core tech, so if you can’t, don’t sweat it. Shooting from the hip when you have to learn a higher level framework isn’t a horrible way to learn the basics, though some will contend that point…

Got an idea? Explore it.

I was in school building .NET applications and learning basic webdev around the same time Zuck released the earliest version of Facebook and was rolling it out to colleges across the country. Obviously, Facebook has grown and evolved exponentially from those days. My point is to not be afraid to play with your ideas, build something and throw it out there. You never know what kind of traction you could get.

People grossly overestimate the value of their ideas.

An idea without hustle is nothing. As you learn to build real things, there will almost certainly at some point be an ‘idea guy’ or two who will approach you with some idea of the century and tell you you can have the privilege of building it for them and keep a whole 2% of some inevitable billions. You’re gonna wanna avoid those.

In the same vein, you don’t have to be as careful with sharing your ideas as you may be led to believe. It’s all about who builds it right and brings it to market first. That said, you might want to be careful not to share with too many people who have the resources to beat you there.

Pick one thing you want to specialize in.

It doesn’t have to happen right away, and you may just get naturally pulled towards something, but keep your eyes peeled for something you want to become an expert in. Like a college major, but perhaps longer term.

As a jack-of-all-trades type, this was hard for me. This doesn’t mean you’re committing your life to one technology, but choosing one thing to become an expert in makes you a much more appealing fit for a tighter subset of jobs.

My core major ended up being Drupal. One Drupal gig led to another, and each time I only learned more. And this was after initially thinking I’d specialize in Wordpress (along with the rest of the world), and probably business CRUD apps before that. You can always go back and double or triple major later on.

Got a letter to write?

It’d be cool to see other developers out there who stumble across this do something similar. If you decide to take a moment to write up a little webdev reverse time capsule of your own, let me see it!

Founder and coder @fermatadigital. @nodejs @reactjs @drupal @meteorjs are my favorite weapons. Also, metal drums. And just about all music.

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