IT has been the most developing sector in the last decades. As a result, web development has become a commonly chosen career path among professionals. Is it still worth going for it today? Here are some tips for those who consider requalification.
For one or two decades, the IT sector has been experiencing one boom after another. In twenty years, the face of the industry has changed radically due to the mobile-first approach and intense development of AI-based solutions. That has created many new career paths – but to this day, web developers are those who stay on demand.
IT market today – should you consider becoming a web developer?
Since the industry didn’t seem saturated enough with professionals, web development has become a path recommended to anyone who considered turning his career 360 degrees. Is it worth starting web development courses from scratch at this point, though? We wouldn’t be so sure about it.
Since it had such a reputation for years, the IT market is currently full of juniors straight out of the boot camp who are enthusiastic but not really experienced. Thus, getting a first job or even an internship has become harder than ever. The demand for professionals is still high, but only if you’re a senior or have a specialized set of skills.
Which skills should you have to succeed as a web developer?
The spectrum of skills to master depends on whether you want to become one of full stack developers or rather focus on frontend or backend. These are the basics:
- HTML CSS and Javascript – aspiring web developers should always learn JS since it’s essential in for both back end and front end web development. These three languages together are essential to master for the front end developers
- SQL – this declarative language serves for creating and modifying databases, and thus, it’s essential in a web development process
- Java – even though JS is the most popular among the programming languages in web development, Java is coming back to the game in 2022 with an increasing demand in web and mobile development
- Python – the renaissance of this scripting language is caused by its application in data science and modeling; for backend developers, it’s one of the basic coding languages next to Ruby and PHP
- Familiarity with different frameworks – the more you’re experienced with, the more chances there are that you will meet the company’s requirements; the most popular ones include Ruby, Django, Angular, Laravel, Express, Node.JS, React, Vue.
Becoming a web developer may still be a good idea, but only if you can prove valuable experience and stand out with a set of specialized yet diverse skills. We recommend taking a short course before investing in a boot camp to check whether it even works for you. Maybe another IT job – for instance, in web design – will be a better fit?
