A career in web development in 2021

Should I choose Web Development as my career in 2021? I bet most of the college students must be asking this question to themselves and to their seniors who are working at some company.

I won't waste your much time and tell it straight away -

"Yes! you should choose web development as your career in 2021".

If you want a job that gives you a decent salary and a skill that you can use to create other income sources, then

"Yes! you should choose web development as your career in 2021".

You only need 3 things, to begin with, web development:

1. Laptop
2. Internet
3. Will to learn

That is all anyone needs to start learning web development. You have to give 1 month to it.

And I guarantee you that, after one month, you would be able to understand how you create a website from scratch.

Web development is divided into two parts-

- Frontend Development
- Backend Development

Frontend Development

In front-end development, you would work on the visible part of any website or application. It means as a front-end developer, you would work on creating the User Interface (UI). And integrate the Application Programming Interfaces (a.k.a APIs) to complete the user interaction.

Backend Development

In backend development, you would work on creating APIs, which help users to see the data or the content displayed on the frontend UI. In the backend development, your code adds utility to everything the front-end developer develops. You would also be responsible for managing the databases for saving the data needed for the website to run and display content.

What Interests you more?

So, before starting your web development course you can think of your interest, what would interests you more -

Is it working on the design stuff and developing the UI components for the websites and applications?

Or is it working on the data part, creating the APIs, working with databases & servers?

Now, that you have decided to do learn web development, and decided to give your 1 month.

and you want to go into the frontend development path, I would suggest you divide your 1 month into 1-1-2 weeks.

- 1 week to learn HTML. 
- 1 week to learn CSS, & 
- 2 weeks to learn JavaScript.

That is all you need to start.

Now, once you get comfortable with the above three, you should start looking into popular JavaScript frameworks and libraries.

Here is a survey by StackOverflow for the popular web frameworks and libraries. According to it, React.js is the most popular one, so you could try learning it.

But if you prefer backend development, then you have a long list of languages that you could learn to start your backend development journey.

Some of the popular languages out there for backend development are Python, Node.js, Java, .Net, PHP, Ruby, etc.

If we look at another survey by StackOverflow for the popular languages used by developers, JavaScript is selected as the most popular language out of all.

Now, the main reason for JavaScript being the most popular language is - Once you learn JavaScript fundamentals, you would be able to work on the frontend as well as on the backend development.

So, that being said, you are still free to use any programming language to learn backend development. And even once you learn JavaScript ( JS ) it is not set in stone that you have to use JS only for the backend development. When you learn a programming language and the basic fundamental concepts of programming, you would be able to pick up any language out there if you are interested.

For starting a career as a backend developer you must learn:

1. Data structure and algorithm basics.
2. Any programming language of your choice, be it Python, Java, or JavaScript.
3. A framework suitable to the programming language of your choice, to make your life easier in developing the APIs.
4. Basics of databases.
5. Hosting your application and handling servers.

As a final takeaway, I’d just like to say that in addition to inculcating the required skills, to be successful as a frontend or a backend developer, you need to be dedicated, patient, and hard-working.

In the end, I would like to emphasize that "Web Development in 2021 is still a good choice to choose as a career", but to grow with the world, you will have to learn and evolve yourself with new technologies in trend and high demand.

Later, we will discuss more deeply what to learn specifically in frontend and backend development and how to grow as a Full Stack Developer from a Frontend or a Backend Developer.

Till then be safe & keep coding...

Cheers!

Lalit