Skills needed for frontend learning

Recently I enrolled in frontend dev. in-class course (booked my seat by prepayment) that starts on coming May. Now as start day approaches i feel some anxiety about was is it right time to learn this? You may ask that I was supposed to think about earlier before enrollment. Advertisement as “limited seats available and good teachers” did its job well. To enroll 3 things are sufficient as they persuaded: basic knowledge of computer, average speed in typing and knowing of English is advantage as most codes and tags are English. Typing and English are not a problem. I got concerned what does “basic knowledge of computer” mean? Well I know how to use Microsoft Office like word, excel etc. I can differ computer from TV ))), can install software and games that is it.

I am some kind of 3d artist using in my projects 3d studio max, vray and Photoshop for correction of rendered picture. But all these at a user level and do not have any idea about how it works in fact.

Since I’m kind of artist by nature, and not good in math, electronics even afraid of, although I could it start learning at my 43 (here I didn’t raise question about ageism cause here got many positive answers, so I feel ok). Back to my questions: what kind of skills, subjects, knowledge as well as experience needed to start learning web developer/frontend course? And in order to become more or less average web developer how much time needed let’s say for average person? Give your honest opinions and suggestions. Thank you in advance.

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Programming relies on layers of abstraction. Web development can be considered a “high level abstraction”. As such you don’t need to know much about how computers “work” from the bare metal electrical signals to a web page appearing in you browser.
Do you know how Facebook works to any degree? If you know what your web browser actually does to get you facebook, then you should be fine. If you don’t know how it works, then it possible you could do a crash course on the topic, but this might be explained to you in the course, so learning these sorts of things ahead of time is up to you. :smiley:
Depending on who the course is targeting your knowledge might be good enough. If they are looking for people like you as students, people who at least know how to use a computer day to day, then you should be fine.

Now how much time it will take for you to to become a web developer is too relative to give any estimate on. It really depends on too many factors, like how much time you have in a day to learn, what you want or need to learn, if you learn faster than others, and how well you learn in general. There’s a big difference between having 2 or 3 hours a week to learn and 5-8 hours to learn each day. How you spend that time is important too, you could go thru all FCC in 100 days, or spend 100 days trying to re-build Facebook from the ground up, or spend 100 days just learning HTML. Depending on your goals, expectations, work ethic, and just how much time you have day in and day out will decide how “long” it takes. Just don’t think at some point you know enough to stop learning, web moves fast, so you will need to keep learning just to keep up as new technologies emerge. I’m not saying become an expert in everything (that’s not possible) just being aware should be good enough :smiley:

So, if you wanted to get ahead of the game in terms of learning web development, go start learning web development! FCC provides plenty of content to start learning lots of different facets of Web Development. If you wanted to jump into learning how the web in general works here is a great article from MDN on how the web works. You should be fine without knowing exactly how a computer works overall, especially when starting out.

Regardless of what you do, I want to offer the best piece of advice I have for just learning programming/development, its if you want to learn something, start by trying to do that something. If your goal is to go out and be able to build websites, web apps, and leverage web tech to build cool and awesome stuff. Then get an idea, and go out and try to build those things. Odds are you are going to fall flat on your face, get stuck, and or run into tons of problems. That is good! You learn by failing, you learn by getting stuck, and spending hours upon hours figuring out simple problems, if you don’t fail you don’t learn. Don’t take it as a failure on yourself, rather take it as an opportunity to improve your skills!

Good luck in your class, keep learning, and and don’t be afraid of failure :smile:

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I would suggest that you ask to speak to several recent graduates. Ask them about:

  • their background before attending
  • what they were grateful they knew when they started
  • what they wish they had known when they started.

And if they had anyone drop out of their class, ask what those students were struggling with.

Their answers should give you a good idea about the expectations for your program.

If you decide to see it through, be prepared to work harder than ever before (just remind yourself that it’s just as important to work smart as it is to work hard), and use the opportunity to network with your instructors and classmates as well as build up a portfolio.

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Knowing Word, Excel, installing software, that’s basic computer knowledge.
You’ll be fine.

It might get tough in the first period, learning all this code and trying to memorise it.

But HTML is not so different from word processing. I don’t know if you ever worked with the old WordPerfect? The one that was used before Windows came out, back when all secretaries knew how to start programs using the command line. HTML looks a bit like WordPerfect’s “under water” screen.
It’s not difficult, just a lot of info to remember and some getting used to. Take your time to learn it.

And CSS is like being an artist with code. It’s all about layout, colours, rhythm, gestalt, and everything you’re already good at as an artist. It’ll be difficult at first with the “cascade” to get used to, but you’ll manage. I thought I’d never learn, and now I love CSS. Great language! Great fun to make a website look like the one in my head.

Javascript might be more difficult for you. It is for me. And that’s because I find it difficult to read the JS language. It’s more math like, without it being math.
But you can do fun things with it on a webpage.

And you might want to read this article before anyone makes you believe it’s al about math and javascript. :grin:

As an artist there is a good chance you’ll find yourself on the UX/UI/Accessibility/HTML/CSS side of front-end.

Good luck with your course!!

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Sir, I really appreciate for your encouraging answer and detailed explanations of obstacles and even odds I might face during learning process. At the moment I don’t know how Facebook works meaning what scripts, cods etc. keep it running but I am going to ask a teacher in the class since you have equipped me with those questions)))). Probably this will make me look clever among newcomers in the class)))). That is not my target.
Also I really appreciate you for the piece of advice towards how to learn this object with practical use and cheering up. There are more questions I will raise here later in this section and will look forward for your unique answers. Have a good day.

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Sir, thank you for your suggestions, surly will try to find out about their graduates and it seems long journey and requires hard work as you mentioned but all these worth of becoming a web developer as I have burning interest for, anyway thanks one more time.

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By the description of requirements doesn’t look like the course will be very deep or will cover wide array of topics.
Maybe you could post a link to the course, so we could check the curriculum?

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Sir, thanks for kind suggestions. Yes, I guess I witnessed WordPerfect or staff looking like that where users were putting commands to fulfill a task, this reminded me old computer Pravetz, Bulgarian Apple//clones in high school we used-enclosed a photo

, but it was kind of UFO at that time for me)))).
Just recently I found out HTML, CSS and JavaScript stand for, and yes CSS I’m going to like it more but will put efforts on learning the rest important builders. One more time thank you.

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Well, here is a link https://proweb.uz/ but it is in Russian language. The length of course is 9 months. Probably it is sufficient for the students with “zero or beginner” level. Thanks.

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So the whole course is just a bit over 100 hours? Stretched over 9 months? Two lessons per week?
And two of those months are for Bootstrap :unamused:
A month for Less, SASS that could be learned over a weekend if you already know CSS. Gulp in 2019?

I also looked at hh.uz to see what skills are required in your country and looks like you must know at least one of the three frameworks (Angular, React, Vue).

Honestly, I don’t know if it’s worth to pay 70 EUR/month for that curriculum in your country. You’ll have to learn on your own a lot, because 100 hours is nothing (especially stretched over 9 months). The main benefits are mentoring and opportunity to network. So I would suggest you to take advantage of that.

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You will have to know all of these to be able to compete and have a good chance of succeeding: github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap.

Yes, it is a lot of stuff, sometimes your head is going to start to spin and your eyeballs are going to hurt because of too many hours staring at the computer.

So good luck on your journey.

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Except of those in class 100 hours, more hours supposed to be spent while doing homework I guess. Yes, I agree that mentoring is most import part therefore I decided to take a course. At the moment I am not planning to make a living by this craft. I want to learn it first of all for myself (coding is much better for me than watching TV shows:) and for the sake of our business which we run with my brother- we run retail store of finishing materials like paints, wallpaper etc. –dreaming about of making web site of my own and support it from time to time. So in my position 70EUR or even more is worth of learning and practically applying it later on. Anyway thanks for advising pros and cons of the program.

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