Developer who learns quickly and has worked across a wide range of front and back end technologies. Working together with my wife on a (currently secret) game project to see where it goes.
From what I see looking at your posts, it looks like you are currently undergoing a journey into the world of JavaScript, which does have a lot more to go with it. As this question is about when to put on the design hat, I highly recommend utilizing the research done by Google and Apple in order to get ideas of what they have found most useable.
Before getting too frustrated, I think it is good to listen to what your mentor has to say and keep learning and researching. Once you have started researching examples of - not necessarily what you like or what I like - what the metrics show work well for the most people, you can then start to figure out why that is.
Once you feel you have a good grasp on the reason why something is generally recommended, it becomes easier to debate well the ways to potentially improve it.
I also see you have been learning bootstrap - there are a lot of themes available that you could also start with to modify. I just looked up material design bootstrap and found a site with boilerplates.
Building a theme (or style) from scratch can be difficult, which is why a lot of people will use bootstrap or a library specific to the framework or javascript library they are using to create their app.
Freelance tech writer and community-builder Self-teaching web development/design, using online resources. Blogs about JavaScript, mindset, and my journey.
From what I see looking at your posts, it looks like you are currently undergoing a journey into the world of JavaScript, which does have a lot more to go with it. As this question is about when to put on the design hat, I highly recommend utilizing the research done by Google and Apple in order to get ideas of what they have found most useable.
I myself utilize material-ui library based upon the material design recommendations from Google.
You may also want to check out Apple's Design Page
Before getting too frustrated, I think it is good to listen to what your mentor has to say and keep learning and researching. Once you have started researching examples of - not necessarily what you like or what I like - what the metrics show work well for the most people, you can then start to figure out why that is.
Once you feel you have a good grasp on the reason why something is generally recommended, it becomes easier to debate well the ways to potentially improve it.
I also see you have been learning bootstrap - there are a lot of themes available that you could also start with to modify. I just looked up material design bootstrap and found a site with boilerplates.
Building a theme (or style) from scratch can be difficult, which is why a lot of people will use bootstrap or a library specific to the framework or javascript library they are using to create their app.
Wow, so many great tips, thank you! Thank you for all of the links too!