{"id":5,"date":"2018-02-02T18:05:14","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T18:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/?p=5"},"modified":"2018-02-02T20:10:03","modified_gmt":"2018-02-02T20:10:03","slug":"how-i-learned-web-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/2018\/02\/02\/how-i-learned-web-development\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Learned Web Development"},"content":{"rendered":"<img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-8\" src=\"http:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/computer_monitor-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"760\" height=\"507\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/computer_monitor-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/computer_monitor-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/computer_monitor-650x434.jpg 650w, https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/computer_monitor.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 760px) 100vw, 760px\" \/>\r\n\r\n<h2>About me<\/h2>\r\n<p>After graduating college in 1999, I began my first career as a help desk technician and desktop support engineer, a career that I would stay in for almost 10 years. After becoming a casualty of the 2009 recession, I began to teach myself web development. I didn&#8217;t become a full-time web developer until 2015. During the six year period between 2009 and 2015, I taught technology in an elementary school until I felt I was ready to take on web development full time<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Why I wanted to learn web development<\/h2>\r\n<p>I had always loved to program as a hobby and throughout the early part of my career after college, I always wondered if I wasn&#8217;t fulfilling my true passion. I always found myself coding small, fun little programs in C as a hobby. In college, any computer programming class that I ever took, was the only one that interested me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>How I approached learning web development<\/h2>\r\n<p>Being out of a job, I decided the best way to learn web development was to start immediately. I purchased my first book, &#8220;Web Development and Design Foundations (4th Edition)&#8221;, by Terry Felke-Morris, and &#8220;Internet and World Wide Web &#8211; How to Program (3rd Edition)&#8221; by Deitel &amp; Deitel. I chose these books because they seemed to have project-based exercises at the end of each chapter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>I used the Terry Felke-Morris to learn HTML4 and XHTML and basic principles of web design. I used the Deitel &amp; Deitel book to learn DHTML, despite the fact it was already considered outdated in 2009 due to its unobtrusive nature. HTML5 was a working draft at this time. I wanted to have a solid understanding of the technologies that were considered out-dated, before coming up to date with the newer technologies. I also wanted to learn the history of web development as well.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Shortly after this period, in mid 2010, formed an LLC in the attempt to develop a portfolio for an eventual full-time position, I started building websites for small businesses and it was at this point that I really had a better understanding of these three languages.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Challenges I faced<\/h2>\r\n<p>The biggest challenges I faced, were being patient and not feeling the pressure being rushed to learn everything as quick as possible. After all, I was unemployed and had a lot to prove to myself.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>I also faced social challenges. I was in a relationship that I began to ignore, due to my new found passion for web development and being in coffee shops all day long. I started to lose friends, I started to no longer exercise. None of this mattered, at least in the beginning of my journey.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>From a coding perspective, I would forget or have to review syntax over and over again until I felt I was able to internalize everything as best as possible before beginning to take on more advanced concepts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Key takeaways<\/h2>\r\n<p>I was fortunate to be in a position to learn on my own and sacrifice years of income. Hard work pays off. I had to grind it out for several years until I felt I was ready.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>At times, I thought I would never make it and boy was I wrong. It is the story I now share with my students and try to use to inspire whoever I can \u2014 those who want to be web developers or anything else in life.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Tips and advice<\/h2>\r\n<p>Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. Can&#8217;t stress it anymore than that. Unless you have a solid understanding of the basics, jumping into what&#8217;s new today, Bootstrap, Node.js, Angular, React, etc, in my opinion, will shortchange you.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Not everyone has the time or opportunity that I had. However, a fraction of what I did is maybe all that you need to succeed. You also have to draw a line in the sand and assess your current situation. Do you have months of time to dedicate to learning without working? Do you have a family? Can you afford a bootcamp? Can you wait until you apply, get accepted, and begin a bootcamp? Can you afford to get a degree in Web Development?<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>If you want to be a solid web developer, you need to put in the work and have a lot of patience.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2>Recommended reading and learning<\/h2>\r\n<p>Here is a list of my go to books that I feel are easy to understand, well written, and have been key contributors to my career.<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n    <li>Any book from the Deitel &#038; Deitel series (my favorites).<\/li>\r\n    <li>Web Development and Design Foundations (any edition)&#8221;, by Terry Felke-Morris. You can buy an older version and still obtain the skills necessary for success.<\/li>\r\n    <li>Professional: JavaScript\u00ae for Web Developers, Third Edition &#8211; Nicholas C. Zakas (in my opinion, best JavaScript book out there, even though it is outdated as far as ES6 is concerned. Still an amazing book).<\/li>\r\n    <li>PHP and MySQL by Example by Ellie Quigley (has significant amount of errata, is outdated, but one of my favorites for PHP).<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<h2>Recommended websites<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n    <li>Hour of Code<\/li>\r\n    <li>Safaribooksonline.com (get a membership, this is a must)<\/li>\r\n    <li>Codecademy<\/li>\r\n    <li>Treehouse<\/li>\r\n    <li>Lynda.com<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About me After graduating college in 1999, I began my first career as a help desk technician and desktop support engineer, a career that I would stay in for almost 10 years. After becoming a casualty of the 2009 recession, I began to teach myself web development. I didn&#8217;t become a full-time web developer until [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12,"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.pixelprofessionals.com\/pp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}