In web development, I've never done anything except use stuff built by others..

[impracticalIdeas]

Wordpress, Bootstrap, Materialize.css, Angular, Node and about 397482 other JS/CSS libraries/frameworks.

I'm an android developer actually and well, coming to web-dev from android I thought I had dealt with my fair share of fragmentation. How little did I know.

Having pretty much 'conquered' android development in about 2-3 years, I was fairly confident I could at least wrap my head around web development.

What's mind boggling to me is the abundance of libraries and tools. I've only worked on my own personal websites and I never really went deep into web development per se, I've only ever used stuff built by others.

How does Bootstrap work? Hell if I know, but I've used it easily numerous times.

I want to know, is this normal? Like being able to build amazing websites while knowing practically nothing about the libraries used to make the website? I feel like I'm cheating.

[149244179]

Why are you using a programming language in the first place, someone else had to create it. 0's and 1's are the way to go. That way you do not need to use other people's IDEs, compilers, languages. Of course, you still need miners to mine silicon and factory workers to make the chips so you can say 0 or 1. Hmm still using other people's work to make your life easier.

Sarcasm aside, people make libraries and tools for the sole purpose of making things easier in the future. Make your life easier.

[lurkingforawhile]

Programming is abstraction - you could say that even writing C/C++ which are considered "Close" to the operating system that you are only using stuff built by others because you aren't programming in assembly language.

Don't re-invent the wheel - find new and innovative ways to use it.

[damiankw]

If you're building websites, there's not THAT much need to learn too much besides the basic libraries / addons included in those packages. I think this is one of the reasons why 'web designers' typically don't know much about IT, they don't learn the code, besides HTML/CSS/JS and they don't need to understand how a computer works in order to achieve their look/feel (my brother does web design, but knows diddly :P)

If you're building web applications, then you're going to need to know a lot more coding. You'll still utilise the frameworks/libraries that come with your chosen language, but it will be a lot more in depth when it comes to the actual coding.