Roadmap To Web Development

Web development refers to the building, creating, and maintaining of websites. Other aspects of this are web design, web publishing, web programming, and database management. In simple words, we can understand it is the creation of an application that works over the internet.

As everything is now shifting online, websites have come into play with every passing day. From businesses and government institutions to our personal and social interactions, we are moving everything to the web. Since the year 2000, the total number of websites has exploded. In just 18 years, the websites on the web increased from 17 million to over 1.6 billion in 2018, increasing over 100 times.

Basic tools

You need to know a few tools before getting into programming.

1. Code editor: A text editor program designed specifically for editing the source code of computer programs. Recommended: Visual studio code.
2. The Command-Line: The Command-Line is essentially learning basic commands such as:

• Creating directories
• Moving directories
• Creating new files
• Downloading dependencies

3. Git And GitHub: Git is a Version Control system used for tracking changes in your project. GitHub is a code hosting platform for Git. It is used as a collaboration tool for developers and digital marketers.

4. Design Tools: Design tools are the software designers use throughout the product development process to help research, create, or test digital or physical representations of their work. Recommended: Figma (why?).

Programming languages

1. HTML (frontend): Hypertext Markup Language is essentially the “skeleton” for your website. It is all about giving a structure to the website.
2. CSS (frontend): Cascading Style Sheets is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in HTML. CSS describes how elements should be rendered on screen, on paper, in speech, or on other media.
3. JavaScript (frontend): JavaScript is a popular programming language that you’ll mainly work with web development. JS adds interactivity to your website. Like the behaviour of responses when buttons are pressed or with data entry on forms.
4. Django (backend): Django is a framework that helps you develop an application faster since much of its assets are pre-built. You need basic knowledge of python to learn this.
5. Express/ Node (backend): Express and Node are JavaScript frameworks that are easy to learn and implement, and they can be used by any web developer.
6. Flask (backend): Flask is an easy, lightweight framework that’s for more advanced web developers; but it’s still important to learn down the road. You need basic knowledge of python to learn this.
7. MySQL (database): MySQL is free and open-source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, and is also available under a variety of proprietary licenses.
8. MongoDB (database): MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas.

Libraries And Frameworks

1. SASS: Sass is a preprocessor scripting language that makes the CSS look nicer and develop faster.
2. NPM: NPM is a package manager for JavaScript, letting you install various packages quickly on a machine.
3. React: React is a front-end framework that’s useful for starting web developers.