An Introduction to Web Development 2018

This article is part 1 of an 9-part series of articles .

T his report is more of a guide for the prospective web developer, and therefore it’s not necessary to read the all of it in its entirety . It’s possible to just read the chapter or section that is relevant to the problem you are trying to solve. Keep this in mind, the topics covered in this report can be broken down into three categories:

• Core competencies (languages, data)
• Intermediate competencies (testing, git)
• Soft skills (editors, deployment)

There are more topics relevant to a developer than this report covers; however, in my opinion, these are all the competencies and skills that a good developer needs to know, regardless of their stack. The web development field (primarily for JavaScript and Node developers) is in a very chaotic state with new frameworks and tools coming out on a daily basis, something that we will get into further later. Because of this turmoil, this report will try to focus on the current “standards” even though these might change in the future. However, the principle and reasons behind these tools and skills will always remain the same.

There are also individual links provided throughout the report for more in-depth reading on different topics when necessary. Furthermore, this report will focus slightly more on JavaScript as opposed to other famous web development languages such as PHP due to JavaScript being the most popular language in the StackOverflow 2018 Developer survey with the top three libraries and frameworks being for JavaScript. Not to mention JavaScript is the second most wanted language , with React and Node being the two most wanted libraries or frameworks .

It is the goal of this report to provide you with a far better understanding of what web developers are talking about, what tools they use, and what you will need to do to become one. This list might seem daunting at first, but it’s been broken down into a manageable 3-step guide on how to setup, build, and deploy a website or web application.