One MORE thing that’s NOT as difficult as you think.

Coding. Now that’s one word that has got a lot of us talking, yet way too many people don’t even know what it means, or even worse — think it’s impossible to understand. This, my friend, is false.

iHub Nairobi — A developer having just as much fun.

Truth is, we haven’t really come to terms with how something as ubiquitous as code — to the extent that it forms the integral part of items as small as digital wristwatches and baby monitors, to massive ones like those powering and managing internet based companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google — and so on, can be easy for anyone to learn.

“It always seems impossible until it’s done” - Nelson Mandela.

Truth be told though— life can be hard. Really hard. Especially the sciences, but Web development isn’t.

A Brief Overview

Web design basically envelopes all aspects, principles and skills involved in the development and Maintenance of dynamic web applications. Examples of web applications are social networking sites like Facebook or e-commerce sites like Amazon or e-learning platforms like Slatecube (yeah, you heard right).

Areas of Website Development

There are two broad areas of web development: Front-end development (also called client-side development) and Back-end development (also called server-side development).

• Front-end Development : Front-end development refers to constructing what a user sees when they load a web application – the content, design like menus and dropdowns and how you interact with it. A front-end developer focus more on tools like HTML, CSS, and javascript since these languages live on the browser. They aren’t necessarily focused on making things look "pretty" (which is often left to a designer), but rather making sure that the information is presented effectively and the user’s interaction with the web page is as smooth as possible
• Back-end Development : Back-end development controls what goes on behind the scenes of a web application. "Back End" typically refers to the guts of the application which live on the server. The back end is more focused on making sure all the right data gets sent out to the browser. It’s the portion of the iceberg below the surface... lots of stuff needs to go correctly to hand off data to the front end so it can be displayed. Here’s an example. Say you log into your Facebook account, and you are greeted with the latest updates in your News Feed. They’re not going to be the same updates that you saw yesterday. How did the page change? Did a Facebook employee manually edit the page to update your news feed? Of course not. A script on the Facebook back-end would have received the updates and re-generated the front-end accordingly. Another example, Google may be a relatively straightforward search engine from our point of view, but they employ an army of engineers to make sure that all the moving parts you don’t see are working properly
• Full Stack : “Full stack” developers marry the two sides into one. While each “end” involves learning a significant amount of information, a full stack developer can comfortably speak both database and browser. This days the trend is to seek developers with great working knowledge of both end (which is what we teach here).

Chuks, Technology Programs Lead at Slatecube

Opportunities Available to Experts in Website Development.

• Applications developers: Applications developers translate software requirements into workable programming code and maintain and develop programs for use in business.
• Games developers: As a game developer, you can work in design, programming, art or animation and are likely to progress quickly in this fast-paced industry.
• Web designer: Web designers plan, create and code web pages, using both technical and non-technical skills to produce websites that fit the customer’s requirements.

And this is just to mention a few, there are still career paths like multimedia programmer, SEO specialist, UX analyst, UX designer, Database administrator, Software tester, Technical author, etc.

Very Important Notes:

• As a designer, understanding the type of website (Entertainment, Business, Company, News, etc) you are designing is essential for clarity, appearance and the overall how-to-go-about-it.
• New tools and technologies for website design are introduced and existing ones are updated daily so you’ve got to stay updated but ultimately their Modus Operandi remains the same.

Interested in Website Design and Development made-easy? Click here to get started.

Thanks for reading!

Say Hey On

Instagram : @slatecube