If you’re learning web development, a road map can be career-saving. About seven years ago, I started learning without one. It was a long and pretty lonely road. I had no clear direction and no peers to talk to. Thankfully, after many detours and uncertainty, I somehow become a useful web developer.
Road Map
This is the basic road map I used to get where I am today. I hope you find it useful.
Level 1 Core
- HTML (web page structure)
- CSS (web page styling)
- JavaScript (front end/client side language)
- PHP (back-end/server-side language)
- MySQL (data persistence)
The first thing every web developer needs to do is learn the basics of the web and the basics of programming. All programming languages share the basic core concepts. It doesn’t matter which language you start with. The time you put into learning the basics won’t go to waste.
Level 1 Fringe
- NginX (web server for responding to network requests)
- DevOps / Server Administration
You can dive pretty deep into these fringe technologies, but don’t go too deep unless you really enjoy them. There’s still lots to learn.
Level 2 Core
- JavaScript
- PHP
If you want to stick with JavaScript and PHP as your main coding languages, the next step is to dive a little deeper into each one.
Level I Frameworks
- Laravel
- VueJS
After you reach an intermediate level, you’re ready to use frameworks. It’s important to learn a framework because very few companies use “vanilla” PHP and JavaScript. Just like with programming languages, learning the basics of a framework won’t go to waste because frameworks share basic core concepts.
Pair Coding
Even after seven years of coding, I can honestly say my favorite part of coding is working and learning with others, also known as pair coding or pair programming.