Ask ten people what a developer does and you’ll get ten different answers. Some picture someone typing green text on a black screen. Others think it’s all about making pretty websites. The truth is messier and a lot more interesting. If you’ve typed web developer developer into a search bar hoping for a straight answer about this career, here’s the practical version.
It Starts With a Problem, Not Code
The typical project starts with a simple request. A bakery would like to encourage their customers to make online orders. A parent view of timetables needs to be available at a school. A startup wants a dashboard that shows sales as they happen. The developer’s first job is to understand what the person actually needs, which isn’t always what they ask for.
The building is not the first step, it comes last. Much of the code is thought, sketched and then questions are asked before even a single line is written. Many people start out and do not do this step and pay the price 3 days later when they have to go back and do all of it again.
The Three Languages You Can’t Avoid
Almost everything on the web runs on three technologies, and you’ll meet them on your first day.
HTML is the skeleton. It communicates to the browser “This is a heading, this is a paragraph, this is a button.” CSS = Clothing, colours, spacing and how things move on a cell phone. The moving bit is the JavaScript. Drop down menus, live search, forms that warn you that your password is too short before you submit.
These can be taught in a couple of weeks. It’s normal to take months to get comfortable. Nobody feels confident from the get-go, and the people who do have it all figured out have simply broken more things than you have.
Front End, Back End, or Both?
Sooner or later you’ll hear these terms.The front end is all of the user facing and clickable part. The back end is the unseen one – servers, databases, logins, payment, the code that keeps you remembered if you return another day.
Others enjoy coding and building, and take pleasure in working with the code.Still other developers appreciate the aesthetic part and spend time manipulating layouts and animations. Some people like the reasoning behind the whole thing, such as ensuring that the data is stored securely, and pages load quickly when there is a lot of traffic. Full Stack Developers are those who can do both. There is no bad answer. Test a bit of each and see what one you lose track of time with.
What a Normal Day Includes
It’s less glamorous than people expect. A typical day might be reading a bug report, hunting down why a button works on one browser but not another, replying to a colleague’s question, testing a new feature on your phone and then fixing the thing you broke while testing it.
You’ll also spend a lot of time searching. Cultivates a habit of self-reliance and self-education. It’s important to know how to get the answer rather than to remember the syntax, and how to evaluate it.
Then there’s communication. The art of explaining a technical problem to a non-technical person is an art in itself and can make or break a promotion and/or a client’s loyalty.
Habits That Separate Good From Great
Tools change every few years, but some habits stay useful whatever you’re working with.
Take advantage of git from the very beginning. It preserves your work, allows you to roll back and correct errors, and enables collaborative work. Test on a mobile device, not just the desktop screen – most visitors arrive on a mobile device. Be mindful of accessibility – create pages that are accessible to users of screen readers and keyboards. And pay attention to speed. A site that takes five seconds to load loses visitors before they’ve seen anything.
None of it is a big deal, but it’s something that clients can see, and they know when a site feels good to use although they can’t explain why.
How to Actually Get Started
Skip the urge to collect courses. Choose one, complete it and then design and create something small. A personal page. A recipe list. A simple calculator. The first version will look rough, and that’s fine.
Then build something slightly harder. Add something you don’t know how to do, get hung up on it, look for information and solve it. That cycle is the real education.
Put your projects online so others can see them. A small collection of working sites tells an employer far more than a list of courses you’ve watched. For each of them write some lines: what it does, what you used and what went wrong on the way. Honesty regarding errors is more effective than glaring statements.
Is It Worth It?
Yes, for lots of people. It can be done from anywhere; there are employment opportunities, freelancing and even product creation; skills transfer as technology evolves. It also has real downsides. You’ll be faced with deadlines, instructions that are not clear, and the bizarre problem where a bug disappears as soon as someone asks to see it.
People who enjoy solving problems and don’t mind a bit of confusion for a bit will be fine.
Where This Leaves You
As a web developer, you’re not a talented person, you’re someone who shows up, as it’s about building, about continuing to build. Discover the 3 basic languages, create small items, break them, repair them and share the creation. Repeat it on a regular basis for a year, and you will be astounded at how far you have come.
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