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Kyle Petersen
Kyle Petersen

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How to Become a Bootcamp Level Web Developer

Coding Bootcamps are some of the fastest ways to become a web developer with many programs taking just 15 weeks you are considered job-ready. Although it can require you to learn an extremely dense amount of information within an extremely short amount of time the Bootcamp curriculum is definitely a good one to learn if you want to get into web development professionally. Here are the technologies and resources you will want to learn if you want to become a Bootcamp Level web developer.

The Backend

Many web applications have what is called a 'frontend' meaning the website with which is run within the web browser as well as a 'backend' which is run externally within a separate server. The backend can be written in pretty much any language but there are definitely some more preferred ones. Most Bootcamps tend to sway towards Ruby on Rails as the technology of choice for the backend.

Ruby

In order to learn Ruby on Rails, you should definitely be picking up the Ruby programming language first. Developed in the mid-1990s, Ruby is a 'developers first' language created by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan. Ruby is dynamically typed as well as uses its own garbage collection making the language a joy to type in as well as making it extremely friendly for new developers. Some amazing resources I have found in learning Ruby is FreeCodeCamp's Ruby programming language full course which you can find here on YouTube as well as Boris Paskhaver's course on Udemy you can find here.

Ruby On Rails

Once you have gained a bit of experience in using Ruby it is now time to move on to Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails is a backend serverside application that uses an MVC architecture and has a ton of different uses. Although out of Bootcamp, you are mainly going to be using Rails in order to create something called an API for your frontend to use. Team Tree House has an amazing guide on Rails which can be found here and Free Code Camp has an amazing video on YouTube as well which can be found here. Bear in mind both of these technologies are going to be extremely slow to start learning and it's going to take a huge amount of time and practice in order to become proficient in either of these technologies. But after you've created a bunch of practice projects and examples most learn to love Ruby and Rails.

The Frontend

Now unlike the backend, the frontend of the web application you are building will consist almost definitely consist of JavaScript and it is extremely helpful to know other technologies such as HTML and CSS which make up the building blocks of the entire internet.

HTML

HTML or HyperText Markup Language is going to be the main building block in which you organize your webpage. It can be combined with CSS in order to help style the document or it can have JavaScipt added in order to manipulate it. HTML is extremely easy to learn but difficult to master with things such as semantic HTML becoming more and more important in modern programming. If you are planning on learning HTML, W3Schools will be your best friend. They have an extremely extensive guide on nearly every single tag or element within HTML and will be your one-stop-shop for all your HTML questions. You can find their website here. learn HTML is also a great resource for getting started as well and they can be found here.

CSS

CSS or cascading style sheets is a style sheet language meant to describe the presentation of a document written within a markup language. If you want to change anything to how your page looks, CSS is where you are going to do it. In this way, CSS can be extremely difficult to become proficient at since it has a huge number of different options for changing up your page. Although it is much like HTML as it is not technically difficult, it requires a large amount of design experience and practice in order to get great. Also, like HTML, W3Schools will be your best friend in this regard and there CSS section of their website can be found here. Other than this, the best way to learn CSS is to learn all the display properties just jump in and experiment with as many commands as you can until you can get a page looking just like how you wanted.

JavaScript

First developed in the mid-'90s for the web browser Netscape, JS has taken of the world of frontend development with nearly every modern web browser utilizing JavaScript as its language of choice. JavaScript's main role within your frontend is to handle and manipulate the document with scripting. If you want a button to add or take away any element from your page, you are going to need to use JavaScript to do it. Many good resources for JavaScript exist with W3Schools also coming up with amazing tutorials and resources which can be found here. Free Code Camp also offers an amazing JavaScript course which can be found here.

React

Although many web applications can run on just JavaScript, HTML, and CSS alone, many modern frameworks exist nowadays for the language which allows for more robust integration of a web application's frontend. One example of these frameworks would be React, which was developed by Facebook in 2013. React since than has taken the web development world by storm with its ability to create reusable components which greatly reduces time when building large applications, it has become a near necessity to learn in order to break into the front end side of web development. React has their own tutorial available for free on their website which can be found here and Free Code Camp has an awesome web page on the subject which you can find here.

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