Becoming a Web Developer

Web development is one of the hottest fields right now. U.S. News and World Report ranks it #3 in Best Technology Jobs and #9 in Best Jobs overall, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects 20% employment growth for Web developers through 2022. Web dev jobs are also highly lucrative and often carry some amazing perks (free housecleaning, anyone?).

The best part is that you don’t need a degree to become a Web developer. Part of the reason so many coding boot camps have emerged recently is that traditional institutions are not preparing students fast enough to meet employers’ demand for talent. In fact, you don’t need to go to school at all to become a Web developer—you can learn all of the required skills, get plenty of practice, and even create a portfolio of your work using free or low-cost resources available online.

Interested? I thought so!

So, without further ado, here is your ultimate guide to tools and resources you can use as your own DIY Web development curriculum. Part 1 of this article focuses on basic tools and Part 2 on more advanced ones.

Command Line Tools

To become an effective developer, you need to be comfortable using the command line. If you are accustomed to using a mouse to navigate your operating system, then you are familiar with the Graphical User Interface, or GUI. The command line is a text-based interface, and you can achieve all the same functionality of the GUI by typing text commands at the command line. You can access the command line through a terminal (Linux/Mac) or Cygwin (Windows).

These tools and tutorials will help you learn the ins and outs of the command line:

Development Environment

The next step is to set up your development environment. Your development environment includes all the software gadgets you need to work efficiently. The most important software you will choose is the right text editor. You cannot write code using Word or OpenOffice because they save too much extraneous data along with your text. The best text editors include functionality specifically for developing software, and they are often referred to as Integrated Development Environments (IDE).

Sublime Text is a powerful text editor with a rich library of plugins and extensions. It is easily customizable, and free on a trial basis (do consider purchasing to support development of this awesome software). For a great tutorial on how to use Sublime Text, check out

Eclipse is the IDE of choice for developing Java and Android applications. Like Sublime Text, Eclipse has a vast library of extensions and plugins, but the learning curve is a little steeper so it can be a bit daunting if you are just beginning.

TextMate is very similar to Sublime Text, but it is available only for Mac and has a heftier price tag. It is a robust, reliable platform that is first choice for a lot of professional developers.

Emacs and Vim may be the dinosaurs of the list, but they stand the test of time for a reason. It would improve your coding street cred immensely to pick up skills on either of these editors, but again, the learning curves are a little steep.

HTML and CSS

Before you can build large web applications, you have to learn the basics of static web pages (walk before you can run).

Treehouse is an awesome platform for the beginning coder. The Treehouse team has broken down Web technologies into manageable and testable pieces, and packaged them into fun tutorials. For all the technologies on this list, Treehouse is a one-stop shop and well worth the money.

Learn HTML (hypertext markup language) and CSS (cascading style sheets) the old-school way with w3schools. W3 is the web consortium that sets the standards for both HTML and CSS, so they are the final word on the most up-to-date technologies.

These tools and technologies will give you the basic skills to build static Web pages. Part 2 gets interactive.

Part 2

In this section, we explore resources for building more advanced Web pages and applications. So if you dream of building the next Twitter, here is what you need to know.

JavaScript and jQuery

No webpage these days is complete without using JavaScript or jQuery. These languages impact everything you see in the browser, including auto-fill forms, toggle buttons, image galleries, and more. If you visit the Google homepage and look at the page source, you will find there is very little HTML but quite a bit of JavaScript.

Codecademy is a fantastic FREE resource for learning Web technologies. There are HTML and CSS courses to go along with JavaScript, JQuery, Ruby, and more.

Once again, w3schools and Treehouse provide fantastic resources for learning JavaScript step-by-step.