A Beginners Introduction to Web Development
Tags: webdev, beginners
Published: 2021-12-19 20:53:56

## What is Web Development?
The development of pages of information stored across series of interconnected resource-hubs/machines that acts to serve information as at when needed has led to the advent of websites and web-apps alike. A website serves two major purpose- to serve relevant information as requested by a user, and or to accept data as input from a user to process: web platforms that performs that kind of operations are specifically referred to as web-apps.
Now to understand how webpages work, let’s use a ‘Barman’s’ description: ‘you go to a bar (a web browser), greet the barman (server), request for a glass of beer (web address/request), and he pours us a glass of cool beer with a smile (webpage/response)’.

![Barman](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/sx1w6ntt044cieezm0h9.jpg)
 From this analogy, we see that we get a web result known as a response when we make a valid request to a server. This is a simple but in exact terms how a websites or webpages are served.
Web development as the name implies entails a series of steps taken to solve a given problem using a variety of web technologies. These web technologies enable a web developer to quickly scaffold a web platform that is performant and solves a task or series of tasks, example: Amazon which solves the problem of shopping and home-delivery.

## How do I get started?
Now for a beginner, it can get really confusing where to start as there are many resources claiming to be the best in making you a developer. First, let’s look at what to have in mind before beginning your journey:

1. 
**A Capable Text-editor**: You don’t have to break the bank for this, there are a lot of free software to use out there to start with, such as [VSCode](https://code.visualstudio.com/), [Atom](https://atom.io/), etc.

2. 
**A web browser** (obviously, so you can see your work as you build it). Most PCs come with one pre-installed, so no fuss at that.

3. 
**An online resource** to get you started with learning, now from my vast knowledge of resources out there, there are so many (free or paid) that opines to makes you better at developing the web, I rounded up two from each category of ‘Free’ and ‘Paid’.

For the free category, I strongly recommend [Freecodecamp](https://www.freecodecamp.org/) for day-to-day studies as they have an awesome curriculum. Second, you should back up that knowledge using [w3schools website](https://www.w3schools.com/) – this platform has a rich collection of docs that explains each web technology (HTML, CSS...) and its usage in depth. It is vital to use both in parallel in your studies to better understand each concept.

Now for the paid category, [Udemy](https://www.udemy.com/) has a great collection of video resources that are curated by authors who are experienced developers, and this can help you go a long way. Second, I think [Pluralsight](https://www.pluralsight.com/) has an awesome collection of video resources by experts in the web industry, which cement the use of each technology into your mind. Whichever you choose from here solely depends on you and your learning preference.
[Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/) also has loads of free videos on practically every concept you could think of that concerns web development, hence is also worth checking out if you want a free video resource.

A good video or text resource should carry you along, explaining concepts precisely and exactly the way it should with code snippets or samples backing up such explanations, not just having code snippets littered everywhere or just all talks and texts with no code/practice to explain or show.

## How do I get started?


![coding](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/o3xmto87dwi3ersq8eus.jpg)
Finally, you should know that the journey to becoming a proficient web developer is tough. It is a life-long commitment to learning and working on various concepts that may shake your depths of understanding. But make sure to ground yourself with the basics as much as you possibly can before diving into advanced concepts.
It can get really enjoyable when you attain basic or little proficiency, the joy of building what works is amazing, hence keep at it and do your best to grab the most important concept, don’t try to learn everything all at once, structure your learning timetable and stick to it.
Remember, **_one step at a time_**, then you might attain advanced proficiency after all.