Web programming, also known as web development, is the creation of dynamic web applications. Examples of web applications are social networking sites like Facebook or e-commerce sites like Amazon.
The good news is that learning web development is not that hard!
In fact, many argue it’s the best form of coding for beginners to learn. It’s easy to set up, you get instant results and there’s plenty of online training available.
A lot of people learn web coding because they want to create the next Facebook or find a job in the industry. But it’s also a good choice if you just want a general introduction to coding since it’s super easy to get started. No matter whether you’re looking for a career or just want to learn to code, learning how to develop for the web is for you. It’s one of the smartest decisions you will ever make!
Web Development Overview
There are two broad divisions of web development – front-end development (also called client-side development) and back-end development (also called server-side development)
Front-end development refers to constructing what a user sees when they load a web application – the content, design and how you interact with it. This is done with three codes – HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language, is a special code for ‘marking up’ text in order to turn it into a web page. Every web page on the net is written in HTML, and it will form the backbone of any web application. CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, is a code for setting style rules for the appearance of web pages. CSS handles the cosmetic side of the web. Finally, JavaScript is a scripting language that’s widely used to add functionality and interactivity to web pages.
Back-end development controls what goes on behind the scenes of a web application. A back-end often uses a database to generate the front-end.
Here’s an example. Say you log into your Facebook account, and you are greeted with the latest updates on your News Feed. They’re not going to be the same updates that you saw yesterday.
How did the page change? Did a Facebook employee manually edit the page to update your news feed? Of course not. A script on the Facebook backend would have received the updates and re-generated the front-end accordingly.
Back-end scripts are written in many different coding languages and frameworks, such as…
PHP
Ruby on Rails
ASP.NET
Perl
Java
Node.js
Python
Without going into more detail, that’s really all there is to web development. So now, here are the best ways to start learning it.
Ways to Learn Web Development
The traditional way to learn web development is to enroll in a university or trade school course. However, it can be costly – and what’s more, the web evolves so fast that schools often can’t keep up!
Luckily, there’s plenty of good quality coding training available here on the Internet. What better place to learn web development than the web itself?
A particular training recommendation is Treehouse. This is because it has a focus on web development, is recommended by many of the world’s most trusted and recognized web developers (such as Chris Coyier) and most of its teachers are themselves web developers.
Teach It To Yourself
You could also learn web coding by researching it on your own, tweaking website templates and inspecting the source code of other websites. A lot of coders learn HTML and CSS this way, using website editing software to tweak a website template and figuring out the code.
However, this method is not ideal. It takes a very long time, and you don’t even know what there is to learn. It’s like having to first find the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle before you can assemble them.