The 2018 Roadmap To

FullStack Web
Development
This post has been published first
on CodingTheSmartWay.com.

Becoming a fullstack web developer requires you to

cover a lot of skills. For beginners it’s often not easy
to find the right learning path and to gain quick
result. At first sight it might be overwhelming to
understand what you need to learn and how
everything fits together at the end.

This post will give you an overview of technologies

you may consider to learn for being a fullstack
developer in 2018 and beyond. We’ll start to take a
look at the foundation and programming languages
and then move forward to more advanced topics
like frameworks and additional tools.

This list will provide guidance to find your path

through the web development jungle in 2018.
Together with a short description of the relevant
topics this post contains link to great learning
resources so that you can start quickly to expand
your skillset.

Foundation
The best way to beginn with your web development
career is to get very good at HTML & CSS which is
the basis for everything else.

HTML & CSS

The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is

essential for every website you’re implementing. By
using HTML you’re defining and structuring the
content of a website by using a simple markup
syntax.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple way for

adding styling to your websites (e.g. adding fonts,
colors, layout etc).

Having understand HTML you should definitely

move on to CSS and make sure to understand the
basics. HTML and CSS are two essentials every web
developer needs to know. This was valid in 2017 and
will also be valid in 2018 …
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Programming Languages

JavaScript
JavaScript is the essential building block for adding
dynamic features to your website. The JavaScript
language is an implementation of the underlying
ECMAScript specification. Learning JavaScript from
the ground up is an essential milestone in starting
your web development career. For many
frameworks on the frontend (Angular, React, Vue.js)
and on the backend side (Node.js) the knowledge of
JavaScript is a prerequisite.

The basics of the JavaScript language are easy to

learn. However, as the ECMAScript specification
evolves, more and more advanced features are
added to the language. E.g. in 2017 features like
asynchronous functions, shared memory, and atomic
operations have been added.

If you’re starting with JavaScript it might be

overwhelming to read about all those advanced JS
concept. Here you should focus on the basics first
and then move on to the more advanced concepts
afterwards.
Course Recommendations:

The Complete JavaScript Course: Build a Real-

World Project
Master JavaScript with the most complete
JavaScript course on the market! Includes projects,
challenges, final exam, ES6

JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts

An advanced JavaScript course for everyone!
Scope, closures, prototypes, ‘this’, build your own
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TypeScript

With the rise of Angular TypeScript has gained a lot

of traction too. If you’re planning to learn Angular
you should definitely take a look at TypeScript first.

TypeScript is an addition to JavaScript and

therefore is always used together with JavaScript to
enable features like type checking.

TypeScript has an excellent tooling, especially if

your work with code editors like Visual Studio Code.
Here you’ll find functionalities automatic importing
of modules.
Course Recommendations:

Understanding TypeScript
Don’t limit the Usage of TypeScript to Angular 2!
Learn the Basics, its Features, Workflows and how
to use it!

Python
Python is one of the top programming languages
requested by companies in 2017 / 2018. If you
haven’t added Python to your programming skill set
yet it’s now the perfect time to start learning.

With Python you’re able to cover a wide range of

use cases. You can implement command line scripts,
GUI application and web applications. Furthermore
the Python programming language is currently
fueling scientific computing.

If you’re learning Python for web development you

should then take a look at Python web programming
frameworks like Django or Flask.

Course Recommendations:

Complete Python Bootcamp: Go from zero to

hero in Python
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Frontend Frameworks
Frameworks — both for frontend and backend
development — makes developing common
functionality easier and faster. However before
starting to use a framework you should always try
to gain a profound understanding of the underlying
technology stack (e.g. JavaScript). This will help you
to learn a framework and understand the concept.

Fist, let’s take a look at the most important frontend

frameworks in web development:

Angular
Angular is a framework for building client
applications in HTML and JavaScript / TypeScript.
The framework combines declarative templates,
dependency injection, end to end tooling, and
integrated best practices to solve development
challenges.

In 2017 Angular has been one of the most popular

frameworks for building single-page web
applications. For Angular developers it a very
exciting year with two major framework updates
(version 4 and version 5). Many new features have
been added and Angular is gaining more and more
traction.

One of the key features added in 2017 to the

Angular framework is ahead of time compilation.
This means that views are compiled at build-time
instead of render time. The result is a much faster
web application. Furthermore this reduces the
bundle size of your application significantly.

If you’re looking for a new JS web development

framework to learn in 2018 you should consider to
take a deeper look at Angular. More and more
companies start to make use of Angular and the
Angular team will come up with many more features
and releases in 2018.
Course Recommendations:

Angular — The Complete Guide

Master Angular (Angular 2+, incl. Angular 5) and
build awesome, reactive web apps with the
successor of Angular.js

Angular — Concepts, Code and Collective

Wisdom
Learn the core concepts, play with the code,
become a competent Angular developer

Angular & NodeJS — The MEAN Stack Guide

Learn how to connect your Angular 2/ Angular 5
Frontend with a NodeJS Backend by building a real
Application

React
React is a JavaScript library for building user
interfaces. React makes it painless to create
interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state
in your application, and React will efficiently update
and render just the right components when your
data changes. Declarative views make your code
more predictable and easier to debug. The
framework is fully component-based. You can build
encapsulated components that manage their own
state, then compose them to make complex
UIs.Since component logic is written in JavaScript
instead of templates, you can easily pass rich data
through your app and keep state out of the DOM.

React 16 has been released in September 2017.

With the release of that version the React team
decided to provide you with a complete rewrite of
the core architecture in order to enable the support
of asynchronous rendering in a future release. Once
available in 2018 this will help to improve the speed
and loading time of heavy web applications because
the main thread will no longer be blocked.

React enables you to create really powerful single-

page application. If you haven’t done so before you
should definitely add React to your skillset. If you’re
planning to develop more complex web application
with React you should also consider to take a look
at Redux. By using Redux you’ll be able to use
central state management in your application which
makes data handling across components much more
easier.
Course Recommendations:

Modern React With Redux

Master the fundamentals of React and Redux with
this tutorial as you develop apps with React Router,
Webpack, and ES6

React 16+ — The Complete Guide (incl. Redux)

Dive in and learn React from scratch! Learn
Reactjs, Redux, React Routing, Animations, Next.js
basics and way more!

Node with React: Fullstack Web Development

Build and deploy fullstack web apps with NodeJS,
React, Redux, Express, and MongoDB.

Vue.js
2017 has been a great year for Vue with an
explosion in growth. Vue is extremely easy to learn
and especially for smaller-sized projects a perfect
choice. The learning curve is extremely steep and
you can expect to quickly see great results.

From a total of 37k stars on Github Vue has evolved

to 78k stars at the end of 2017. More and more
companies are adding Vue.js to their stacks and the
demand for Vue.js developers is growing constantly.

Course Recommendations:

Vue.js 2 — The Complete Guide (incl. Vue

Router & Vuex)
Vue JS is an awesome JavaScript Framework for
building Frontend Applications! VueJS mixes the
Best of Angular + React!
The Ultimate Vue.js 2 Developer Course
Learn and master VueJS by building 3 professional,
real world web application using Vue!

Backend Frameworks
There are many options you can choose from when
selecting a backend framework for your web
project. However, in the following I’ll narrow it
down to two options, one for the JS world (Node.js)
and one for the Python world (Django).

As the name suggest, backend frameworks are

running on the backend (on the server) and are
generating HTML, JSON (etc.) for your website in a
dynamic way depending on the URL your user
visits.

If you’re only developing on the frontend side of a

project it’s not needed to add a Backend framework
to your skillset. However, to gain a profound
understanding of how everything is fitting together
you should at least consider to understand the very
basics of a backend framework.

Node.js
Node.js enables you to execute JavaScript code at
the backend and is extremely powerful especially if
Node.js is used together with the Express
middleware.

In order to start with Node.js you should first make

sure that you have a sound knowledge of the
JavaScript programming language. This will ensure
that you can understand the core concepts of Node
quickly.
Course Recommendations:

The Complete Node.js Developer Course

Learn Node.js by building real-world applications
with Node, Express, MongoDB, Mocha, and more!

Node.js, Express & MongoDB Dev to

Deployment
Learn by example building & deploying real-world
Node.js applications from absolute scratch

Django
Django is completely written in Python. If you like
the elegance of the Python programming language
you’ll like the Django. Django is a powerful
framework and serves you for a wide range of use
cases. However, if you have gained a profound
understanding of Python, Django is easy to learn
and you’ll discover the pragmatic approach very
quickly.

If you would like to use Python and the backend

side of your project you should not definitely take a
look at Django and start learning it.
Course Recommendations:

Python and Django Full Stack Web Developer

Bootcamp
Learn to build websites with HTML , CSS ,
Bootstrap , Javascript , jQuery , Python 3 , and
Django 1.11!

Tools

Git

Git is by far the most widely used version control

system for any kind of source code.

If you are working as a developer today you will

sooner or later get into contact with Git and
GitHub. As a version control system Git is used by
many companies already and most of the
frameworks and extensions presented in that article
are also hosted on GitHub.

To complete you skillset as a web developer you

should consider to learn at least the basics of Git.
Course Recommendations:

Git Complete — The Definitive Step-by-Step

Guide To Git
Go from zero to hero with Git source control step-
by-step with easy to understand examples. Become
the next Git expert!

Webpack

Webpack is a module bundler for modern JavaScript

applications. When Webpack processes your
application, it recursively builds a dependency
graph that includes every module your application
needs, then packages all of those modules into a
small number of bundles — often only one — to be
loaded by the browser.

In 2017 Webpack 2 and Webpack 3 have been

released and the module bundler has grown to
become standard of module bundling in the JS
world.
Course Recommendations:

Webpack 2 — The Complete Developer’s Guide

Master Webpack as you deploy web apps supported
by Babel, code splitting, and ES2015 Modules.

Conclusion
Web development skills are in very high demand
right now and — if you have not started yet — it’s the
perfect time to start learning web development
right know.

Even if you’re already an experience web developer

you should invest some time to keep up with latest
technologies and frameworks.

This article should give you a guidance for your

learning path and at the same time is providing you
with resources which helps you to get started
quickly.

This post has been published first

on CodingTheSmartWay.com.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which

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