Help me create a fast-track path to success

#1

Hey there, I am looking for some experienced developers opinions on my development learning path. I began learning approximately 8 weeks ago and have been able to build a fully responsive photographer portfolio website for a friend of mine using only HTML5 and CSS3 (with a few JS plugins like lightbox and zenscroll for added finish).

The Issue

I understand fully that the next step in my journey is to learn JavaScript. I am starting currently on FCC and Codecademy. The main problem is, After JavaScript there are literally endless libraries and frameworks to learn. Angular, Vue, Node.js, React just to name a few big players for web development. This doesn't even get into Mobile App development like React Native, Ionic, Flutter with DART, Swift, and the list literally never ends.

I’m not sure I entirely want a developer job at a company, I have a lot of passion for my own ideas and work. So since I don’t have to please what a specific company is looking for,

What do you feel is the best route for me to go after vanilla JavaScript?

My Goals

  1. Be able to develop professional Websites and Desktop Apps easily
  2. Create cross-platform apps for iOS and Android, preferably with Flutter
  3. Build a simple side-scrolling 2d game like Mario (like those old flash games as a kid)
  4. Have a custom app I have built from the ground up running on all devices by Jan. 1st 2020

Thanks for reading!

1 Like
#2

Just my opinion, given your stated 4 goals.

Of course, YMMV… but it will help if you can carry-over your knowledge and programming experience when you want to do other things.

C# and .NET Framework

C# and .NET Framework

C# and Xamarin for iOS and Android apps

C# and Unity
C# and Cryengine
C# and Monogame

Have a custom app I have built from the ground up running on all devices

All devices? What do you mean by ALL? Like an XBox consoel, Hololens, all Windows devices?

C# and UWP

… yeah, you say… but I can’t use C# for frontend development work, running in a browser.

It’s still experimental, but likely will become a real thing.
C#, .NET running on WebAssembly in your web browser
https://blazor.net/

Do your own research, try these things and other things too. But if you want knowledge re-use and not learning one particular language to do only one thing (Objective-C for iOS, Swift for iOS, Flutter for Android, etc…) I suggest check the above resources and decide for yourself.

Good luck & happy programming!

1 Like
#3

Forgot to add…

Internet of Things (IoT)

yep… C# and IOT Core
But seriously, C, and C++ are the players when you want to seriously program microprocessors and do IoT stuff.

Machine Learning

yep, C# and ML.NET
of course, R & Python is more popular for Machine Learning

1 Like
#4

So what I’m gathering from this is C# can do everything? I honestly know nothing about C# and .Net. Could you ELI5 for me what you can do with C# that you can’t do with JS or the other languages I listed? What about Flutter and DART? So many languages I’m getting confused

#5

It’s not the language per se, but more like what support/library/frameworks are available in the language you’ve chosen so you can possibly do whatever you want. Microsoft is just 100% behind C# and they’ve provided the frameworks necessary for you to program whatever you want, on almost whatever platform. And they’re not going away in the forseeable future.

To be fair, you can develop desktop apps using Javascript, HTML and CSS via Electron.

You can use JS too for server-side programs (NodeJS).

Games? Yeah I think so too.

It’s really more about finding what available tools/platforms/frameworks/libraries you can use with your chosen language to do what you want to do. Some supporting software are not just available in other languages, or there may be other alternative libraries.

I’m not sure I entirely want a developer job at a company, I have a lot of passion for my own ideas and work. So since I don’t have to please what a specific company is looking for,

^^^ You mentioned this, so I assume you’re not really interested in learning the “flavor of the month favorite framework” by companies in order to get a job?.. which right now seems to be ReactJs. I don’t know what’s your definition of success. It’s different for different people.

#6

You have been a great help in furthering my understanding of these concepts.

I guess success in my mind would be coding and building applications of all kinds as my job. Not necessarily for a company, maybe for my own company that I start, or just freelancing. I have already been offered 3 website gigs from people I know IRL and I’ve only been doing this since Jan. 4th 2019.

I’m just trying to pick the brains of experienced people so I don’t learn a bunch of extra stuff that I won’t need. Like for example, you don’t need to learn Angular, Vue, and React correct? You just learn one of them really well if I understand all the posts and videos.

So I just want to know how to best streamline my path so I don’t wake up in 2021 and I’ve been learning a bunch of stuff I don’t even use you know?

Mason

#7