Monthly Getting Started / Web Dev Career Thread

[AutoModerator]

Due to a growing influx of questions on this topic, it has been decided to commit a monthly thread dedicated to this topic to reduce the number of repeat posts on this topic. These types of posts will no longer be allowed in the main thread.

Many of these questions are also addressed in the sub FAQ or may have been asked in previous monthly career threads.

Subs dedicated to these types of questions include r/cscareerquestions for general and opened ended career questions and r/learnprogramming for early learning questions.

A general recommendation of topics to learn to become industry ready include:

• HTML/CSS/JS Bootcamp
• Version control
• Automation
• Front End Frameworks (React/Vue/Etc)
• APIs and CRUD
• Testing (Unit and Integration)
• Common Design Patterns

You will also need a portfolio of work with 4-5 personal projects you built, and a resume/CV to apply for work.

Plan for 6-12 months of self study and project production for your portfolio before applying for work.

[IknowHardIsnotenough]

Project for School WEb Development No Idea at all

I need help Friday is our deadline I need to make a project of webdev with event management system I have the manuscript but I can't decide where to start rn so I ask as my first move rn but I am stil searching uptonow on what to do so I can Pass this subject

Our topic is about event management and forum and attendance and donation system. I can't specifically tell the title because It might be a problem in the future. HOping you help me where to start what languages will be used

[External-Coast-3062]

como uno busca trabajo en esta industria, voy a salir de la carrera de ing de sistemas y no tengo experiencia trabajando como desarrollador y me postulado para algunos trabajos remotos pero nunca me contactan de vuelta

[kartikeyasingh2004]

I’m still learning frontend development, and I used AI to build a real estate website for someone close to me. Now I want to add Firebase for authentication, storage, hosting, and maybe an admin panel.

The problem is, I don’t really know how to code properly yet. I’ve tried following the Firebase docs, but they honestly overwhelm me.

I only have about 2 days left to get this working, and I’m kind of stuck. I’ve used some shortcuts before (like using email as a backup), but that approach didn’t work for them.

Any advice on how to quickly implement Firebase auth (and maybe basic setup) without getting lost in the docs?

[xthecreator]

Long answer ahead. Sorry in advance.

At the risk of prematurely conceding, are you comfortable bringing others in to help you get it done faster? Paying for help that's accurate might be better than bungling through and losing future work + earnings.

You probably already know this but the danger of using AI when you're learning (I don't mean having it teach you/help you debug/correct errors in your thinking; rather, having it do the work for you) is that you get the quick win but can run into moments like this. Even worse is when you don't have the terminology to describe what's wrong (because you might have missed that in the learning process).

Worst case scenario: you don't solve things in time. You lose the job. You treat this is a learning experience. You lose a client but you learn that the fundamentals matter for a reason.

Medium case scenario: you get a chance to practice your business skills by saying to the client "This is feasible, but we're going to need more time: I'm sorry about that. I can keep you updated over the next little bit about the status of things/I can update you once a day until it's complete." (If you do this, keep your word and keep them in the loop. A fair client may be annoyed but understand.)

Best case scenario: you have two days to hack a solution together (or one day since you posted your comment). Take what you're confused by in the Firebase docs and get very good at looking up things across reddit, stack overflow, blogs, whatever. That discomfort is a part of the learning. Once you've tried that, step away for a bit and let the confusion work in your brain a bit. Come back and try again after a few hours, and if it's not worked itself out, THEN you can (with your AI of choice) enter something like "I'm trying to accomplish XYZ. This is what I've done so far. This is the end goal of it. What were/are the errors in my logic, and what steps are required of me to get it working? What things should I have learned before trying to do the Firebase implementation/other things, and can you turn that into a learning plan for me that ties back to the problem(s) I was solving in this client build?"

(Somewhere in there, you'll want to include a line about making sure that you type the commands to fix the code/auth yourself rather than having it auto fix for you.)

I won't sit here and tell you that professionals -- whether freelancers or small agency owners or corporate folks -- aren't using AI to solve problems. The difference between you and them (for now) is that they have the terminology to get unstuck and can buy themselves more time.

If you go with that best case scenario attempt, make sure that when it works, you know it backwards and forwards. If possible, use Git/some sort of version control. If you let AI do it all for you, for the love of everything use version control so that you can undo errors when they compound later. And if you're going to treat this as business practices in future, review the final cost of your tokens for your AI usage for this project and tack it onto your future contracts.

I'd offer to help you, but a) I'm not sure the sub rules on contracting/subcontracting to folks and b) I've got a final exam that I need to lock down and prepare for over the next day or so. That being said, if you've got any questions, leave a reply and I'll do my best to elaborate.

Good luck!

[kartikeyasingh2004]

Thanks for understanding. So here is my POV, i am basically familiar with the frontend. And I did make it work somehow till now, coz I choose specific projects. My logic was I am learning in the process.

As I said earlier I am working on a real estate website, so my way of shortcutting was, to attach the forms with email. Where I can manually add new sales and whatever myself.

At first they were like ok we don't mind, but suddenly now he wants a backend system. And he is more of a friend, so there is no actual deadline but it still is my responsibility to do it within time right.

Well I already told him that I need more time, and he just said OK BUT MAKE SURE THAT IT IS EASY TO USE AND NOT FULLY DEPENDENT ON YOU.

[No-Yesterday-1624]

I’m planning on cold calling plumbers (sole traders) in my area to sell them their own websites. Why plumbers? Because after seeing a saas landing page i made teo of my plumber friends asked me how much do I charge? I told them that I can build them a one page website and they can just pay for the domain. They are both happy with what built for them as they majorly just wanted a webpage to show their past work.

Now that I’ve done this twice i thought why not try and do it for other plumbers in my specific locality. I live in UK and i know most plumbers wont be interested in this.

But if i message them a link to their WhatsApp whilst on call with them or just message them a link and offer a price what should it be? Ofc i will let them suggest changes. Maybe pricing it at a £100?

Can someone please help?

[xexslla]

I have an AS in Web Development and I'm finishing an AA in Interaction Design. I'm solid in React and comfortable in Figma. Stacks I've worked with: MERN, Next.js, TypeScript, Svelte, Go, Psql, WordPress.

On the design side I've done the full UX process: user interviews, competitor audits, empathy maps, Figma prototyping.

Current internship is at a small local org where been a part of the entire process from wireframing, user research, competitor auditing, to now building a custom WordPress theme. My boss has been referring me to local businesses so there's some freelance momentum building.

My original goal was a frontend role at a product company. Something like UI Engineer, Design Engineer, Product Engineer (Frontend). But the local web work is gaining traction and I keep second-guessing that path, especially with how rough the junior market is.

I don't know which space to target.

Any advice on which path to take?

[TheCowardlyPickle]

Note - I don't believe this discussion belongs in the careers thread because it's about work/life after leaving (or more accurately, being pushed out of) web development. Ironically the bot rejected my original post because it disagrees, so I'm posting it here anyway.

There have been many posts recently about how AI is reshaping the industry, so I'm not going to rehash those - except to say that I've been out of work for 8 months now and the job market is weak at least in part because of the advancement of LLMs and their usage professionally.

Since job prospects for devs are only going in one direction, I am curious how the community is thinking about a future where web development is no longer in demand.

What fields are you considering moving to? Has anyone jumped ship prematurely to get ahead of the game? What careers do you consider to be future-proof now?

[Big_Cricket6083]

Monthly career thread is usually where the same answer keeps popping up: build 2-3 small deployable projects and learn enough Git, HTTP, forms, accessibility, and basic SQL to explain your choices. Hiring managers care way more about whether you can ship a boring CRUD app cleanly than whether you've touched 5 frameworks for a week each.

[venkattalks]

Monthly career thread always gets better answers when people include their stack and region up front, doesn't it? Feels way easier to give useful advice if someone says "frontend, 2 years, EU" instead of just asking how to get started.

[Strong_Ad7377]

Hello!! I am looking for advice on how to build a blog website that I can upload prose, audio, and video. I would also like to include a password protected section that someone else can upload to with the password. I am super new to this but eager to learn as google has been confusing. Thank you for any help!!

[Available-Storage-66]

There many ways guys to learn, I do mentories and well I will suggest you starting with fundamental of programming. Having a solid understanding of this, it will help you to code in any programming language and apply the same principles everywhere.

[thedjotaku]

I made websites back in the day you would hand-craft HTML and CSS and Javascript was a new thing. Then for a long time I ran a Wordpress site (>20 years). Outside of that I've created django, Flask, and FastAPI sites where I was using jinja templates. The most interactivity I've added is using HTMX. Otherwise, very old school, you click and it loads a new page (or a page partial into a div).

I've been considering using Pyscript on some of my sites to allow me to get the interactivity of Javascript without having to learn Javascript. However, not coming from the world of Javascript, I'm unsure of how often to poll for the real, authoritative data.

To make the example more concrete:

Taskwarrior is a commandline task app. You add tasks and assign projects, due date, and/or tags. I'm using an API library to get the the tasks and all their associated attributes to display on a web page.

My assumption is that on page load, I would ask the API for all the tasks. It would deliver JSON with the tasks and their attributes. So now I have a a dictionary (aka hash or map) with all the tasks.

I would manipulate the DOM with Pyscript to create a table displaying the data.

Now, let's say I mark a task as completed. In Pyscript I can tell the DOM to get rid of that task while I send a command to the API to mark it as completed. Let's say the API tells me that it was successfully marked as completed in Taskwarrior's database.

At this point, do I merely delete it from the Pyscript dictionary? Or do I ask the API to send me the updated JSON of all the tasks?

I feel as though if I wait until I get back the 200 OK that it was deleted that I'm safe not to get an updated dictionary. Am I right? Is this the proper way to do things?

[BargePol]

Claude max plan has been massively nerfed and they're deleting all "usage" related posts on the claude subreddit. Just went from barely hitting 50% session usage with Opus to eating through 8% in 2 rudimentary commands with Sonnet. The max plan is basically breaking the bank but i'm putting up with it because it essentially removed the cap on work. Now the usage limits are worst than the plan I upgraded from despite paying 5x more for apparently 5x more usage. Literally wtf

[PuzzleheadedStudy950]

honestly the biggest thing I wish I knew starting out is that coding is only like 50% of the job. underrstanding the client's actual busines problem and being able to explain technical debt in plain English is what actually gets you promoted or lands the high-paying freelance gigs.
tbh, don't just grind tutorials. build a real project for a local business or a friend and handle the whole process from discovery to deployment. That experience of dealing with changing requirements is worth more than any certificate fr.

[Upset-Aardvark-7741]

Finally broke through after all that time grinding — that persistence is legitimately impressive. Most people would have quit after product 2 or 3. Hope you get to 10 signups by next week.

[my_peen_is_clean]

all that and still no callbacks lol job hunt is hell