How much vanilla javascript, css , html and python must a junior web developer know when applying for their first web developer job with a physics degree?
How much git do I need to know? The degree of git I know is how to upload my projects onto my github account for recruiters to see.
I’d recommend learning more than that to realistically land a job.
Vanilla JS is definitely essential to know, but most jobs will also want you to know one of the 3 major front-end frameworks/libraries—Angular, React, or Vue. Not knowing one of those puts you at a disadvantage.
If you intend on using Python for web development, I’d further recommend learning either Flask or Django. But Python isn’t super common in web development—some companies definitely use it, but in comparison to other programming languages, it tends to be on the lower scale of popularity and prevalance for web development specifically. Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, Java, and C# tend to be more prevalent.
And you should definitely learn Git more—just knowing how to use Git push is super basic. I’d suggest a minimum level of competence would be to know how to contribute to an open source project—cloning, forking, creating a branch, updating your branch, and submitting a pull request. That’s the sort of thing you’ll end up doing in most developer jobs.
You can apply to jobs at anytime during the learning process, if only to get feedback on what your lacking. Nothing provides better indication as to “where you are” than to apply for a job and get rejected because you lack experience with Y. (Y could be anything)
Whats important is knowing what you don’t know so you can focus on the areas you are expected to know for jobs your applying to, and understand your current weaknesses overall.
So yes its ok to apply, but that doesn’t mean your “done” learning.
You can always learn more just to become better well rounded, regardless of your situation with topics like:
I think the idea that there is a point you can apply to jobs is wrong, you could get lucky and get the first job you apply for, but this is unlikely. At the same time, there is never a point when your “ready” to apply, and thus should focus on learning what you need, and focusing on those topics. You can learn a multitude of things at any time just to become more well rounded right now, and apply at the same time, so you can focus on what is actually required for the jobs your applying to.
It’s heavily dependent on portfolio and company needs. In my opinion, many 0 experience junior positions that would hire those with some coding ability have 3 features: relatively low starting wage (often barely living), mandatory overtime, a lot of manual html rather than app creation due to very tight deadlines.
The other aspects, culture, overtime policies, benefits vary significantly.
In my experience, central/nor cal, you can’t make a living wage as a junior with no or no recent developer experience and an outstanding portfolio/connections. Trust me, I’ve looked for 9 months and have a decent list of clients, tech stacks, network, and yes experience working as a developer.
I ended up dropping all expectations and narrowing it down to two options.
Option one was finish the full stack certificate and apply to a company that appreciates me even if they pay lower than average. Then during my tenure, I’d rack up experience at the job full time plus dedicating weekends to what I want to learn, ie my dream stack in my case angular. Having this double security: having a developer job and relentlessly pursuing my craft is imo a relatively risk free way to improve.
The second option is to Get full stack, take udemy classes, go chingu, open source and develop with others for free then learn to negotiate on interviews the best offer you can get while taking white boarding interviews.
A lot of people, generally those younger and non risk adverse go with this option with success. Many say it was the hardest thing they’ve done but they reaped a 6 digit salary because of it.
My advice is while people have been successful doing both in this forum, for me, a planner and older lady who is very type a, the first is far less stressful with room for error. The second requires a lot of networking as well as more risk taking and a lot of failure, but you ramp up very quickly.
Also competition is stiff. I’m in the uncomfortable middle child not yet intermediate stage where I’m no longer junior but need a team with a tech lead with over 10 years of experience to drastically improve.
I’ve almost exclusively coded alone and picked up the pieces when someone else left. This is also a reality: you see the high turnover and will definitely be picking up someone’s code.