How to Become a Web Programmer in 3 Months: a Step-by-Step Action Plan (Front-End)
If you’re asking yourself — Can I become a programmer — by the end of this article you’ll get your answer.
You want to become a coder and don’t know where to start? This article lays down a practical action plan you can follow to become a programmer in 3 months.
The goal of this article is to give you a general understanding where to start, what resources you could use, what programming languages to learn. And of course — in what order to do it all.
Month 1 — Create a First Website (HTML + CSS + jQuery)
Set a goal of building a complete website by the end of the month. Choose the topic of your site — the one you’re interested in. This will motivate you along the way.
You start building your website by studying HTML and CSS. Those are the basic building blocks of every site — and by accident — also the easiest coding languages to learn. They are so called “declarative languages” — meaning — you, as a programmer, will basically tell (declare) the browser how to display the information. HTML and CSS are very easy to learn, but at the same time — they will introduce you to the more advanced concepts in the future.
One of the advantages of HTML and CSS is that you essentially don’t need no additional web design software or even web hosting to start. All you need is any text editor and a browser — preferably Chrome.
To make your website a bit fancier, you might need to learn some jQuery. It’s a library that allows you to create such things as interactive image galleries, animations and effects like “expand” etc.
jQuery will be your soft introduction to the third building block of every website — JavaScript. If HTML and CSS essentially describe how you want to present your content in the browser, JavaScript is there to make the web page interactive. For instance — you want to integrate a simple comment block to your website — using Disqus — the dynamics behind it — the way people post their comments, expand the comments of others, etc. — are built in JavaScript.
Month 2 — Become Front-End Developer (Master JavaScript)
JavaScript is the essential language for every Web Developer. In month 2 of your web development learning you will be building a lot with JavaScript.
It’s often called Front-End Development, since it is all happening in the browser — directly in front of the user.
Back-End Development, on the other hand, refers to the processes that happened somewhere on the server. User has no direct interaction with these processes.
You already started learning some basics of JavaScript in your first month. Now it’s all about expanding your knowledge. Good place to start is a brilliant book “Eloquent JavaScript” by Marijn Haverbeke.
Pretty soon after starting learning JavaScript you will discover the whole new world. Please dive right into it — learn modern practices, don’t get stuck in the past.
In 2017 it is essential to understand the new JavaScript standard — ES6. This standard makes a language easier to understand for newcomers, it’s much more concise and future-oriented.
To be effective in your work — you need to get familiar with tasks automators such as npm scripts and gulp. As a new programmer who started with the simple HTML and CSS pages you will be amazed about the power they bring to you.
Next step in mastering your front-end development skills is learning to use package managers yarn and npm. You will discover one simple truth of programming:
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel — for every possible problem there is a solution made by others — ready for you to grab and use
Understanding this will elevate you to the next level. Essentially there will be no limit to your programming craft. If you ever see a problem you are not yet able to solve yourself — just look for the solution in npm.
Finish the second month by learning more about webpack. It will make a lot of sense if you follow the learning path I described earlier.
Month 3 — Build Credibility
By the third month you will “know enough to be dangerous” — this is the old coding saying.
But because you might lack a “proper” university degree or education — some might see this as a weakness. And it’s be harder to get hired as a front-end programmer.
Fortunately in our field you don’t need anything expect the credible list of stuff you have done. You will need to set up a personal portfolio, a website showcasing your works. You will need to publish your code on GitHub in order for others to see — how far you’ve got as a front-end developer.
It’s easier when two of those are connected. For instance, you could build small interactive web application — say — that will predict the rain within next 15 minutes — make it fancy looking, showcase it on your website — and publish the source to it to GitHub.
This is relatively easy to do, but it will score major points by any recruiter that will look at your portfolio.
What helps you learn and build credibility at the same time — is teaching. A youtube tutorial series, medium posts or similar — could be a nice way to start.
Next Steps
Do you want to learn more about becoming a programmer? Which programming languages to learn? What resources to choose? And how?
