Skip to content Go to Sitemap

"I know HTML/CSS/JS. Now what...?"

If you're comfortable coding in HTML, CSS and JavaScript and are looking for ways to improve further, or even prepare for a larger project or - god forbid - a job... then you're at the right spot!

A little bit about me: I'm a mostly self-taught coder who worked as a frontend web developer for 4 years. That's how I learned what is important in the ~ business ~.

First, make sure you're "done" with learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript. That means you should be very comfortable working with these languages. If you're self-taught (or even if not) the chance that you've missed some topics while learning these language is pretty big. I wrote a self-study checklist for this exact reason. The checklist gives you a list of topics you should be familiar with.

If you know how to code but don't know how to make a website on the Internet, here's the keyword to search for: "website hosting"! For example, you can use Neocities to host your website, it's free and I use it. But there are many different hosters out there, free and paid. Additionally, you might want a custom domain, such as my-cool-website.com, but these all cost money for every month you use them.

Recommended

If you're not already using an IDE such as VSCode to code in, you should get used to this now. You should also learn how to execute command line commands. I explain how to do this here.

Now you can start learning some other basic stuff that any web developer should know:

  • Git & GitHub (Check out my tutorial for git here!)
  • How to write and work with JSON files
  • How to write and work with XML files
  • How to work with SVG images
  • Any CSS preprocessor. The most popular is SCSS.
  • npm or any other package manager (Check out my tutorial for npm here!)

Once you've understood npm you can start learning Webpack, which might seem confusing at first but is a must-have for bigger coding projects. Here is my explanation and tutorial for Webpack.

JavaScript

If you're planning to make a big project, or if you are trying to get a job, I recommend getting familiar with one of the popular JavaScript frameworks/libraries. The 3 most popular (in this order) are:

  • React
  • Angular
  • Vue

(I'm probably going to make a tutorial for React some day.)

These are often used together with TypeScript, which is "semantic sugar" for JavaScript. It adds typing / type checking. I highly recommend learning it.

Optional

If you want, you can learn how to use any of the many static site generators out there. (I have a tutorial for one of them, Eleventy/11ty, here.) However, keep in mind that static site generators are usually only used in small projects, so you probably won't need to know how to use one if you get a coding job.

Another thing you can learn is any CMS (= content management system). However, there are many of them, so if you want to learn this for a job I recommend finding out which one they use first. The most-used CMS is called WordPress, which you've probably heard of. I honestly don't recommend learning it... It's ancient, old, and hated by pretty much every developer. You might have also heard of Joomla, Shopify, Blogger and other famous CMS. Most of these have the same issues as WordPress, because the older a CMS is, the more popular it gets, but the worse it is to work with. My recommendation for CMS is: If you need to learn one for a job, do it. Otherwise, skip this.

Backend

If you're interested in backend (= server-side) coding, you can learn PHP and how to work with databases, specifically SQL.

Non-Web

If you want to create desktop applications (e.g. for Windows) or mobile apps (for Android and iOS) you could do this with JavaScript by using React Native or Electron.

If you want to learn a popular, all-purpose programming language, I'd recommend Python.