How and where to start as a front-end web developer

No one is exaggerating when they say now is the best time to start learning web development. This isn't one of those fad careers. The field is projected to grow 10% for the next decade.

But there's a catch to it. You have to be able to learn the skills and it's not always as straightforward as it seems. There's a lot of stuff to sift through so here's a quick way to get through it.

Commit to learning the technical stuff

Once you make the decision to become a front-end developer then you need to be 100% in. It's no harder than learning anything else once you start putting the work in. You just need to be determined to keep going until you get it all figured out.

It's ok if you have to slow down or take a break as long as you know without a doubt that you will come back to it and speed up. Changing your mindset to have the confidence to learn how to program sounds corny, but it's even more important than the technical skills themselves.

The reason you need this mindset is because you never stop learning as a developer. There's always new versions of packages to deal with, updates to programming languages and standards, and new ways for your code to break. There will be times where you hit an issue that will push you to your technical limits and that commitment makes the difference between you pushing through and you falling out.

Go through some free material

You can find so much free stuff on front-end web development that it would be a shame if you started anywhere else. Go through some of those free tutorials and videos! That’s how you'll figure out if this is really for you. Start writing some sample code and read as much as you can about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

After you've gone through a few different tutorials and guides, try building a project from scratch. It doesn't matter if you think it's good or not, start writing code. If you like this, good! Keep going! If you don't, it's cool. You didn't spend any money and you did learn something that most people won't even attempt.

Decide if you need more help.

When you've been through more tutorials than you can remember it gets to the point where you feel lost. You're not quite sure what to do next and sometimes it's hard to get a foothold on the next step. That's when you have to start making some important decisions that will shape who you become as a developer.

You can stay on the self-taught path and muddle through some documentation and a lot of Stack Overflow. Or you can pay for someone to show you exactly what you should be doing and how to do it. There are coding boot camps, online classes, and some college courses on front-end web development.

Keep in mind that you will always be self-taught to some extent. Even when you get a job you'll be digging through documentation and Stack Overflow. The purpose of the paid services is to get you up to junior dev status faster than you could do on your own. So keep this in mind as you take those first steps into front-end development. You aren't the only one with questions.

These are a few of the things that you can do to get started as a front-end web developer. The most important thing is still getting your mind wrapped around the fact that you are going to be a web developer. The rest is considerably easier when you aren't fighting the urge to do something else.

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