Focus can be difficult
I am a front end developer and let me tell you that it can be overwhelming. HTML, HTML5, CSS, CSS3, JavaScript, Angular, REACT, Canvas, etc. Its all coming at you everyday and everyone is talking about it like they are experts in it all. You have to focus.
If you are just starting out in the front end development world, do not look at all of the things.
All of the things can break you.
Instead, build a foundation. Learn HTML5 and CSS/CSS3. Get good at it. Then learn Javascript and get a hold of it. Understand what you are looking at and continue to build on. Don’t try everything. I’ve gone down this path, and it is frustrating because it is a lot of information, and it is really hard to grasp all of the things, so don’t try. The odds are that you will never be an expert in every facet of front-end development. Find that niche that suits you and excel. Grow into the best developer in that thing you find most rewarding. All of the things are great, but all of the things at once are unattainable.
I am one of those people that have a difficult time with this fact. I love the idea of all of these languages and libraries, and I want to control them all. So, I research them all and find that I have a lot of little bits of information that only buffer my brain on an endless loop of indecisiveness. Now, I am putting that behind me. I know where I want my strengths to lie, and I will only focus on those puzzle pieces. I may not be able to complete the full puzzle on my own in the end, but what I will build with the focused knowledge I obtain will be great, and will work great with other developers puzzle pieces and together, we will control all the things.
Consider the old metaphor of riding a bicycle. You want to go fast, jump ramps, do tricks, but you don’t even have the bike yet. You need the wheels, the frame, the handle bars, and the rest of the things that make up the bike. Once you have the parts, are they put together? If the bike is put together, now you need to learn how to ride it, and you don’t learn to ride the bike by going down the most dangerous hill in San Francisco leading to a 10 ft. ramp, do you?
If you don’t focus on one aspect of coding before learning the next, it will be like taking inventory of your bike parts, learning to ride, and heading down that hill all at once. There is just no likely way to succeed. Instead of all the things, start with the first thing, and move forward to the next once your ready. The development world is always moving forward, but you’ll get there a lot faster if you take your time each step of the way.
