A Beginners’ Guide to Web Development

If you are reading this post, most probably you have some sort of interest in web development, or even you are thinking about starting to learn about web development. In this post, I would like to show you what path you can follow to be a web developer. This is a beginners’ guide to web development from the perspective of what to learn and how to specialize. This is not a post in which you will learn coding. I just want to point out what you need to consider before you start learning to code. So, welcome to our dynamic and ever changing world. One of those fast-paced professions with lot of challenges and excitement. So let us define some basic concepts first.

Front End vs. Back End

The initial separation you will feel here is Front End vs. Back End. Let us clarify first what is Frond End and what is Back End.

Front End

Web applications are categorized as distributed applications with a client-server architecture. So, we have a part of code which runs in the client and another part in server. The part of application which is run and rendered in client (most of the time, the client is our web browser) is called the Front End. The most usual technology combination which is used to develop for Front End is HTML+CSS+JavaScript. Front End specialists usually develop expertise in creating Front End of the web applications using these technologies. Another common skill Front End developers master is slicing Photoshop designs to HTML+CSS+JavaScript web pages.

Back End

Back End developers write code that runs on server. Usually, this part of the job entails communication with the database for reading/writing data, reading/writing files, doing the business logic, etc. In some cases where the business logic resides in client side, then Back End is used to serve the data from the database usually in the form of Web Services. Back End developers usually master one of web programming languages and a Database Management System.

You can master both, but from my experience, I have seen that all web developers tend to like one more than the other. Some even specialize in only one of them. Although there is a line of separation, there is no limit that which side should do what. Sometimes Front End is used only for visual representation and all the job is done in Back End. In some cases, Back End only serves the data and all the calculations and functions reside in Front End. It is a matter of design and architecture to define which side does what (although, depending on the architecture you choose, there are some guidelines about the responsibilities of each side).

Programming Languages

There are a lot of available programming languages for web development. When we want to program on Front End, the defacto standard language is JavaScript. When it comes to Back End, we have plenty of choices. Let me list some of the popular choices:

• PHP
• JavaScript
• Ruby on Rails
• ASP.NET
• Java EE
• Python

And this is not a definitive list, just those that came to my mind right now. So which one to choose. Well, your choice should be evaluated based on some factors like: the job market, hosting environment of the web application, available learning resources, available time to learn, the development community around you.

If you want to work as a web developer, in my opinion the most important factor is the job market. You should analyze the job market you are in (or you want to be in) and choose that language that has most job openings. Another important factor is the hosting environment. For example, PHP hosting is quite cheap compared to Java hosting. If you are going to develop an intranet application which is going to be hosted internally in an organization, perhaps Java EE could be a very good choice, but if you want to host your application online, Java EE could be rather expensive compared to other languages.

With the popularity of Node.js, JavaScript has started to become a popular choice of Back End programmers, however, this is still quite a new and immature technology compared to others, and I would not recommend it as a choice of beginner Web Developer.

In my opinion, PHP has the easiest learning curve, cheap hosting environment, plenty of learning resources and relatively easy development environment, so I would recommend any beginner web developer to start with PHP. ASP.NET is also a good choice. Microsoft offers a lot of learning resources, free development tools and a pretty rich environment. If you like the Microsoft ecosystem, ASP.NET is a very good choice.

Frameworks

If you are a beginner, give yourself some time before you start learning a framework. Frameworks are code libraries which make the life of a web developer easier. Frameworks give a structure to a web application, help web developers do some tasks a lot easier and faster than coding everything yourself. If you want to be a professional Web Developer, then it is a must you learn at least one framework, which boosts your speed of development.

You have plenty of frameworks which try to be general solutions or specialist solutions. You must evaluate your needs. If you have chosen PHP, I would recommend Laravel as a framework of choice. It is a sound MVC framework which is quite trendy these days. If your choice is with ASP.NET, I would definitely recommend you learn ASP.NET MVC and EntityFramework at least.

Web development can be huge and you may want to focus on one type of application, let’s say development of web sites with Content Management Systems (CMS). Again if you have chosen PHP, I would recommend you continue with WordPress. WordPress allows you to create web sites, blogs, but also it can be extended with ready plugins or custom themes and plugins to quite complex business applications.

You will find plenty of choices for frameworks for any language you choose, so based on your language of choice, you will have to work with different frameworks.

What Next

As a first advice, even if you choose to specialize in Front End or Back End (I would strongly recommend you do), you should have a grasp of the other side, and if you do, your team’s performance will be better. If you have learned a programming language and mastered a framework, what I would recommend is you start with another one. Programming languages have their own philosophies and paradigms, and sometimes some differ quite a lot. Knowing two or more programming languages will allow you have a better picture and understanding how programming problems are tackled and will make you a more fluent developer. As I said earlier, you have to consider many factors when you choose your languages. My choices until today were: JavaScript, PHP, ASP.NET, and Java EE. I’m still looking forward to extending my list. :)

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