If you plan to start your web dev journey or are a web developer, you must have come across this.
And if you google "How to become a web developer", mostly all the results will look something like this,
- Learn the Basics of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
- Go through WordPress Tutorials.
- Learn the Basics of UI and UX.
- Blah, Blah
Okay, Okay but stop I don't have my whole life, the list could be endless, the prerequisite could be endless. I bet you, the people giving this advice are either very senior people in the industry who had no choice to learn all this at their time or they are just jealous because things have become pretty easy now, you don't need to learn PHP before learning React, as a matter of fact, anything, obviously you need to understand few basics concepts before you dive in, but that all can be learned in parallel.
Look, to begin with, we need to understand this, learning is not a linear path, it's a graph, a graph of dependencies, no one can say that you need to learn this before that. The most senior developer also sometimes doesn't know few things about HTML, and that's perfectly okay.
Let's try to understand this using a real-life example, Suppose you are in your home and you need to reach someplace "X". Now there are several traffic lights in the path between your home and that destination. Now, what do you do? Do you wait for all the traffic lights to become green then only you will step out of your house. No right? So think this to be the same, start your journey, when you are stuck just learn that thing and then get back to your path, this is the most optimized path, no matter what.
And I can't stress on this enough, because I have wasted a lot of time, just in thinking that I am not ready, I need to do this first and then that, and then maybe I can start. And guess what I never started. I was just lost in my procrastination. But eventually, I did, and now I realize that all that waiting was really unnecessary.
So what is the conclusion, do we just start with React, or Vue, or any framework? Well not exactly!
See, one thing I strongly believe is that there is no right path, and no two journeys are the same. I knew almost nothing about web development 6 months back, even today whenever I start learning anything new, I feel like Jon Snow! But I am used to that feeling now, and I know It will never go away, and you know what's the best part, when you are feeling that way its a sign that you are growing, you are pushing your limit, you are moving out of your comfort zone.
As Marrisa Meyer said:
If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room
Still, you know sometimes things get pretty confusing for a beginner, so having a path helps, not a prehistoric path of the "PHP" era. Learn only things that matter, go ahead, if you are stuck, learn that particular thing, and then back to the path, Well If you want I can write another blog where I can share my 6-month journey of transformation from "No Stack to Full Stack Developer", that might help you get started, so please comment down and I promise to write another blog on the same if I get enough responses.