Playing football and learning Web Development

guest post from Christian Smith

2020 welcomed me to the world of Web Development.

Throughout the last year, Covid-19 has given the majority of the world more time than we could ever dream of to assess ourselves, our career paths and our goals.

If at the start of 2020 you were to say the words “web development” to me, I wouldn’t have had any idea what you were talking about, but fast forward 12 months and I’m well on my way to becoming a self trained web/software developer.

So how did I learn about Web Development?

An old team mate of mine Robbie Simpson has a website called LAPS Careers, which is for current and ex professionals in sports. I happened to come across a post he retweeted over on Twitter and found myself on the careers page which featured job descriptions for a variety of jobs.

From this and for anybody who knows me knows I love my tech and I went to my number 1 resource site, YouTube. A few videos later and after watching this video from Kim Complete I was sold and my codecademy journey began.

What is Web Development?

Web Development is the building of websites using the two core technologies HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) & CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) within a code editor, two of the most popular being VSC (Visual studio code) & Atom.

Only HTML & CSS needed? Sounds great, but not too fast. For anybody wanting to create their own site then this can be done with just the two, however if you’re wanting to add more dynamic, interactive things, or even build games and apps then this is where programming languages come into play.

What is a programming language?

To keep things simple, Programming Languages are sets of instructions web & software developers use to input information in to computers & apps that produce various different outputs upon users input requests.

Despite there being many different programming languages, some of the more common ones are:

  • Javascript
  • Java
  • Python
  • Ruby

I’ve left an image of what a code editor can look like below.

https://aines25.github.io/christians/resources/images/pexels-pixabay-270366.jpg

Looks easy right? If you would like to have a look for yourself, go on to your favourite website, right click and press inspect. Your favourite website’s code is now in your hands to play around with… Don’t worry your website changes won’t save! Enjoy.

So what’s next?

I am currently working my way through learning my first programming language Javascript.

Creating this website has allowed me to practice and learn valuable elements of development, some that I didn’t find easy at first.

As time goes on I will use the site and the web dev section especially to practice and show new things I learn on my journey.

Thanks for passing by.

Christian


 

Christian will be regularly updating his site to voice his opinions on a variety of topics whilst practicing the fundamentals of code on his learning journey to become the best developer he can be. You can find it here:

https://aines25.github.io/christians/index.html

Or you can connect with him on social media here:

https://www.instagram.com/aineswoot25/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-smith-a63093109/

https://twitter.com/SmithChristian4?s=20

LAPS Members can discuss Christian’s post on our Community page.