Writing thousands of lines of code and turning into a website is one of the most creative and complex things for web developers. If you are new to this business, saw a lot of beautiful websites and thought about trying it out, we need to open our eyes and talk about some of the things a web developer needs. Creating a website that attracts the attention of users is not only learning various programming languages, it is also exploring other concepts such as DevTools, data formats, testing, APIs, authentication, and much more. Here are some of the things a web developer needs to master.
1. HTML / CSS / JS
An important skill that every developer should learn first is to know these three basic building blocks, i.e. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You will use HTML and CSS in the frontend for interfaces. Right-click on the web browser and select the option to view the page source. You will find the structure of your site where many HTML tags are used for various purposes.
CSS is also used in the web interface, which defines the style, design, layout, and how HTML elements should be displayed on the screen.
Javascript is currently in high demand and is responsible for making your HTML pages dynamic. Javascript also comes with various languages such as PHP , Python , ASP.Net , to make your site more interactive. If you intend to specialize in Javascript, such as MEAN Stack or MERN stack , you should delve into this language because it will be your external and internal language.
2. Git and Github
Git is one of the most popular version control systems used by most organizations. Most likely, you need to work on this version control if you get a job as a web developer. For this reason, you should spend some time learning Git and some basic commands, such as cloning, sending to repositories, creating a retrieval request, merging branches, etc.
Github is a service where you can use your Git repositories to host code. Github is used for collaboration or, you can say, allows developers to work together on their projects.
3. Development Tools
You can do many things using Development Tools, such as debugging, editing HTML elements, editing CSS properties, checking devices, tracking JavaScript errors, etc. Every developer should be aware of the use of various tabs (elements, console, network, and much more). ) In DevTools, to make their work easier and faster. Depending on the browser, you can use any DevTools, such as Chrome DevTools , Firefox DevTools, or another browser that you use. People prefer to use Chrome DevTools to develop, test and debug a web application, but again, this is the choice of the developer which browser is used to develop the website.
4. API (application programming interface)
In web development, you will have to work a lot with APIs that deal with third-party data. This allows developers to use some features without sharing code. There is an awesome Github API repository that can be used for a variety of purposes, and it also provides many ideas for projects. You can check the Public API link and examine it.
We recommend that you learn about using Rest APIs, HTTP request methods (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE), creating Rest APIs, CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete), another status code, data format ( JSON, HTML or XML) used in the request, etc.
5. Authentication
There is a high probability that you will be dealing with user authentication in order to track users on a particular website. For example, to provide users with the ability to log in, log out or create some resources from a personal account, track which resource which user created, or block some pages for those users who are not logged in. User account security is heavily dependent on authentication. Therefore, it is important to know how to work with such features in your web application.
There are many ways to implement authentication for users, and it depends on which programming language or technology is used. If you use React on the web interface and Node with Express in the server side, JWT (JSON Web Tokens) can be used for authentication, if you use Php, you will have to work with the session and cookies, you can also use third-party organizations such as Google or Twitter to login. Thus, there are several modes of working with authentication, but for web development it is important to study and implement it.
6. MVC (model, view, controller)
MVC is a design pattern that saves developers a lot of time by dividing the application into three different sections. Working with the MVC pattern makes development faster and easier. Many high-level frameworks, such as Laravel, Django (based on MVT, close to MVC), Angular are based on MVC patterns. In MVC, a model is associated with interacting with a database, the view is responsible for everything that the user sees on the screen, and the controller acts as the interface between the model and the view. Learning MVC will help you easily understand the basics for any programming language.
7. Programming languages
Computers do not understand human languages, and therefore it is necessary to communicate with the system in programming languages. In web development, not only programming languages are required to learn, but also algorithms that you can apply using a wide range of programming languages. Web developers use various languages such as PHP, Python, Java, Ruby and, more recently, Javascript, which competes with them. As a web developer, you must know at least one programming language to create a web application.
8. Search and problem solving
If you want to become a web developer, you must have natural skills in finding problems and their solutions. This skill can be developed using some projects, using data structures and algorithms, solving some problems, puzzles, and the like, but you need to continue to practice whatever you choose.
Regardless of whether you are a beginner or an experienced, in the role of a web developer you will have to look for information, syntax or a solution to some problems when creating an application. You will probably come across some strange bugs that you don’t suspect, and you need to contact the Google or stackoverflow communities for help to solve this problem.
9. Writing tests
Many developers find this a waste of time. For a small application, you can ignore the writing of tests, but if you are creating a large application, it is recommended to write tests, such as unit tests and other types of tests, because this helps to make the process reliable and facilitate debugging. At first you will feel that you are wasting time, but later you will realize that it actually saves time, so make it a rule to write tests when creating the application.
10. DevOps and Deployment
Last but not least, as a web developer, you must have knowledge of maintaining, scaling, migrating, and deploying code on various platforms such as Google Cloud , AWS , Heroku , Netlify , etc. There are many options, so spend some time learning about these platforms, how these services work, and how to deploy or maintain code on these platforms.