Decoding Web Development - A Learning Manual For the Rest of Us

Web development might sound like rocket science when you hear about it for the first time.

At least that was the case for me.

And if you don't have programming experience or a computer science background, you might turn around and walk the other way.

But wait! You don't have to!

What if I tell you you can easily fix that knowledge gap.

The problem is:

Most programming-related courses leave the responsibility of learning the prerequisite knowledge to you.

They are kind of like “Come back when you’re ready!”.

And sometimes they don’t even mention the prerequisites, and let you be confused for a while and learn it the hard way.

The first few tutorials might be okay, but at some point, things get knotty.

Decoding Web Development aims to help you fix the knowledge gap and provide you the background to understand those complex-looking topics.

It’ll help you draw the whole picture in your mind, and understand the advanced topics along the way.

P.S. This eBook is continuously updated.

I'm also publishing my everyday findings on my website: decodingweb.dev

About Me

I'm a software engineer, technical writer, and open-source contributor. I've published articles on Sitepoint.com and recently freeCodeCamp.

I'm also maintaining two popular packages on Github (lavary/crunz and lavary/laravel-menu) with half over 1.2 million installs in total.
I decided to write this book to help new developers (including my uncle) have an easy and smooth start with web development.

Table of Content

• Preface

• The mysterious world of web development
• Why you should consider web development
• Job market
• Salaries
• Remote work
• You can bring your ideas to life
• You don’t need a university degree
• How long does it take to learn web development?
• First things first: establish a foundation
• A quick history lesson on operating systems
• What is I/O?
• What is the client-server model?
• What is a client application?
• What are communication protocols?
• How do websites work?
• Static and dynamic websites
• Front end and back end
• Which one to choose?
• Front-end Development
• Responsibilities of a front-end developer
• Front-end skills to get you started
• HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
• Specificity
• CSS Frameworks
• Responsive design
• JavaScript
• JavaScript engines
• JavaScript libraries
• Web APIs
• Browser APIs
• Third-party APIs
• Data-Interchange formats
• Front-end skills to become a pro
• CSS preprocessors
• BEM and ABEM
• JavaScript frameworks
• How about vanilla JavaScript people talk about
• What is Node.js?
• What Is asynchronous I/O
• NPM (Node Package Manager)
• TypeScript
• Build automation tools
• Module bundlers
• Task runners
• What is Babel?
• Back-end Development
• What do back-end developers do?
• Building CRUD interfaces
• Making web APIs
• Building authentication & authorization systems
• Integration with external systems
• Decoding a back-end developer job description
• Your master sword: a programming language
• What is an algorithm?
• Programming paradigms
• Imperative paradigm
• Declarative paradigm
• The intended domain of use
• Which programming language should you learn?
• Data and databases
• Schema management
• Database management systems
• Types of DBMS
• Relational database management systems (RDBMS):
• Query language
• No-SQL
• How back-end developers use databases
• Backend web frameworks
• How frameworks power your application
• What frameworks to use
• CMS knowledge
• Using a CMS versus writing everything from scratch
• Headless Content Management Systems
• Command-line skills
• Shell Scripts
• Remote CLIs
• Concepts front-end & back-end developers should know
• How to learn a programming language
• Language syntax and semantics
• Control flow
• Data types
• Type systems
• Functions
• Debugging
• Web browser’s developer tools
• Testing
• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• System testing
• Purpose of testing
• Regression testing
• Smoke testing
• Test-driven development (TDD)
• Version control
• Cloud computing
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Serverless architecture
• SEO technical concepts
• On job titles
• Final words …

What if you don't like the book after purchasing it?

If after purchasing this eBook, you realize it wasn't for you, then, DM me on Twitter (@lavary_) within 30 days and I'll refund you because I didn't provide you any value.