Why should I learn web development?
If you’ve ever wondered how the internet works, and how websites are made, give this a read.
Web development is a comprehensive domain that covers the entire process of building a website — from making the layout to hosting the website and maintaining it. More than that, it is a fast-paced, dynamic career option that requires a quick mind and excellent problem-solving skills.
Why web development?
If you’ve ever dreamed of bagging that super dream package and working in a FAANG company, web development is the way to go.
According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage change in employment in web development from 2019 to 2029 is a whopping 8%, astoundingly larger than the average of 4%! This means that in terms of job opportunities, web development is a booming sector with a predictably increasing demand.
Apart from that, web development is a must-have skill for anyone who wishes to build brilliant projects and showcase them in hackathons!
There are two major aspects to making a website: front end and back end web development.
Front end or client-side
The part of the website that the user can see and interact with is called the frontend. Frontend acts as the face of your website and is a crucial skill to master in order to make a lasting first impression. It has three main components -
- HTML — The basic skeleton of the website is designed using HTML. Using HTML, you decide where the heading goes, how you want to layout the body, and so on.
- CSS — CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is responsible for beautifying your web page. What should the border width and colour of that box be? How should the button behave when I hover on it? These are some of the questions that CSS answers.
- Javascript — Javascript is the brain of the frontend. It is concerned with decisions such as — what happens when I click that button? How to show the system date and time on my website? Javascript adds interactivity to your website.
Backend or server-side
When you open up a web page on your browser, you’re basically interacting with a large computer called a server. A server, as the name suggests, is something that “serves up” a website on request. Servers basically store the website and all the data associated with it and respond to requests to retrieve that data.
Backend web development deals with linking your website to a server that will store the pre-created HTML, CSS and JS files using a database. It is written in various languages, however, many developers tend to prefer Javascript, having used it in the frontend already. Nodejs is a Javascript runtime environment that executes Javascript code outside of a web server.
Hence, both front end and back end are crucial to understand for you to build beautiful, fully functional websites.
Where to begin?
If you’ve ever looked up resources on web development, you must’ve been overwhelmed by the multitude of online courses and websites, each seeming better than the other. Confusing to pick one, isn’t it?
One possible way to approach this vast field could be by getting a step by step overview of it, how the basics work, and try to build a website from scratch yourself. After gleaning all the knowledge needed to make a website by yourself, you can dive deep into the domain of your choice — front end or backend (or both) with newfound confidence.
Building Functional WebApps, a two-day workshop on web development, is an opportunity for the same. At Building Functional WebApps, we aim to give you a head start into the thrilling world of web development, within a span of 8 hours. Our goal is to help you learn the basics of this vast domain, with the help of industry experts from companies like Amazon and Redhat. And guess what? It’s absolutely free.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Check it out for yourself here.
Want to explore more? Check out our blog on all things technical, to keep the learning going!
