15 Web Developer-Related Career Paths

hey what's going on guys so if you want to become a web developer these days it can be very overwhelming for for many different reasons including the amount of Technologies and tools available the rapidly evolving landscape especially with all the AI advancements and just the vast amount of information to absorb and in the past when we classify web development our web developer positions we really divide them into three categories and that's front end back end and full stack but the truth is that there's so much more to that there's a lot of sub categories and I'd say the lines between the front end and back end are really really starting to blur especially with Technologies like server-side Frameworks or server-side rendering Frameworks serverless functions and again with AI doing more and more the general work I think that now is a better time than ever to really establish yourself in a specific area so with that said what I want to do in this video is just look at a an in-depth list of more targeted paths that you can take and different roles that are available under the wide range of web development so front-end back-end full stack they're all meshed into these categories but I didn't use those umbrella terms to describe any of these categories so this will probably be quite a long video because I do want to really dig in and look at the skills and tools that you'll need if you do decide to really Niche down and take one of these paths now before we get started I just want to say that I've met a lot of people through the years doing this and it seems like a lot of the people that have really made it and have become really successful are ones that focus on a specific area and become an expert in that area so just keep that in mind because I know a lot of people try to learn everything and master everything and it's just impossible so it's better to really find something that you're into that you really love and stick to that area and focus on that set of Technologies those tools and so on all right so let's take a look at the list [Music] all right guys so this may be a bit of a lengthy video because there's 15 different roles and paths that I want to go over and I'll talk about what each role entails including skills and Technologies and feel free just to kind of let this play in the car or in the background while you clean or cook the slides are just some bullet points for each role or position they're not really things you have to look at so the first area is not even full-blown web development it's more in the area of web design and that's a UI ux designer which stands for user interface and user experience so when you go to or you build a website or an application there are stories to create for users to follow and this is where UI ux designers come into play they focus on creating the look The feel and functionality of the user interface and they ensure that it's visually appealing and user friendly and I think that this gets overlooked a lot when it comes to talks about web development I mean great you know react or you know view but someone has to put together the story and the flow and the the design aspects of that application and it's an incredibly important position so it and it's really just the start of everything so if you feel like you have more of an eye for design more than hardcore programming and logic then this might be a route to take and you'll need to have a good eye for design and understand design principles like typography white space visual hierarchy your main software in this case won't be an IDE or a text editor like the rest of these roles it'll be some kind of design tool like figma Envision or something like that so you'll also create wireframes to plan out the layout and the structure of web pages or app screens and develop interactive prototypes to test and refine the user experience so this last one here is just my opinion but even if you're going to be a UI ux designer I think you should still have some basic understanding of HTML and CSS not that you have to take any layout and be able to take any layout and create a web page from it but just having that basic knowledge I think that it can help bridge the gap between design and development and lead to smoother collaboration with Developers and a more cohesive final product but that's just my opinion so next we have a single page app or a spa developer and this is essentially a front-end developer and this is where we specialize in creating single page applications which are web apps that load once from the server and then dynamically update the content without requiring the page to reload and the Technologies used to do this are front-end JavaScript Frameworks like react angular views felt so a big part of your job is mastering one of these Frameworks and its ecosystem and obviously HTML and CSS also play a big part in this as well so you'll Implement client-side routing to manage your views your components State Management is extremely important and is probably the toughest part of building a single page application at least in my opinion so you'll be using tools like Redux or view X to manage your application State and you'll also need to know how to interact with apis even though you won't be creating you know rest apis or graphql apis you'll still need to know how to interact with them so you'll need to know HTTP methods and Status codes headers and more you'll be using the fetch API or something like axios pretty often so that's a front-end developer or a single page application developer next we have server side developers which is basically what we know as a full stack developer and they specialize in creating web applications that that generate and render content on the server before delivering it to the client's browser and there's a few ways to do this and different combinations of Technologies so you could use something like PHP with laravel with blade templating or you could take advantage of the newer SSR Frameworks Like nexjs Remix nuxjs and have some code on the client and some on the server so the javascript-based SSR Frameworks are really popular right now but other languages have had a lot of the same capabilities that those give us for years now so you can be a server-side web developer and specialize in something like python or PHP golang c-sharp or just about anything else so you'll pick a server-side technology or language along with a framework you could also go the more modern SSR route databases and orms play an important part so postgres myc equal mongodb things like that as well as orms to connect and interact with those database systems whether that's sqlize or mongoose or something like Prisma and then if you go the traditional fully server-side app and you don't want to work with front-end JavaScript Frameworks then you'll probably be looking at template engines like ejs pug blade twig there's tons and tons of them different languages and different Frameworks have or use different template engines and then authentication and authorization are also extremely important so you learn about sessions cookies Json web tokens learn to use oauth to use logins from third-party platforms like Google GitHub Facebook I'd say this role is probably the has the widest range of Technologies on this list there's really so many so many different types of server server-side Developers now the next one is API and microservices developer and it's a specific type of backend developer that specializes in designing developing and maintaining microservice architectures and apis so they basically create small independent services that communicate through apis enabling the development of scalable and modular applications and this is similar to what a back-end web developer would do except they only focus on the heavy Logic the data rather than rendering views they don't worry about templates and HTML and all that their end result is going to be just a Json format or some other data format again you'll be working with a server-side language and that could be node.js python kotlin c-sharp whatever it might be and you'll need to understand the principles and patterns of microservices including service Discovery load balancing and fault tolerance you'll Implement API gateways for routing and load balancing requests to microservices and you'll be creating secure apis and implementing authentication and authorization so if you really like the kind of behind the scenes logic and never really enjoyed the UI creation then this may be a good path to take so next up we have the devops engineer and this is the person that focuses on the deployment and operations of the application so they're the ones that are responsible for the infrastructure such as the servers databases and other services they're also the ones that are responsible for the whole deployment process such as continuous integration continuous deployment and you'll get really familiar with Cloud providers as a devops engineer so AWS Azure even even companies like digitalocean maybe even Firebase Super Bass there's so many different platforms out there infrastructure is a big part of devops so you'll learn infrastructure as code with platforms like terraform serverless functions as well as CI CD with tools like Circle CI GitHub actions Jenkins you'll also Implement things like monitoring logging and alerting using various software there so overall these are the folks that make sure everything runs like a well-oiled machine behind the scenes for managing servers and databases to deploying applications seamlessly that's the role of devops and again their toolkit includes Cloud providers container Technologies which I didn't mention so like Docker I would Docker with kubernetes these are some common tools that you'll use in devops so next we have mobile developers and mobile devs specialize in creating applications for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets they're responsible for developing apps that run on iOS Android or both platforms and mobile development is uh obviously a rapidly growing field and it offers various career opportunities and there's a couple couple different types of mobile developers there's native mobile developers which are the ones that create apps for a specific platform such as iOS or Android and then you also have cross-platform mobile developers which are the ones that create apps that work on multiple platforms so IOS and Android and in many cases they use a framework like react native or flutter to create those cross-platform apps so if you're a web developer and you want to get into Mobile development you can actually use your existing skills to create mobile apps using Frameworks like react native if you do want to strictly do Native iOS then you're going to learn Swift or objective c and if you want to stick with Android that would be kotlin or Java for cross-platform and more web dev friendly you know you have react native flutter and you have some other ones as well so and you'll probably be creating apis along with your mobile apps using whatever language you prefer so next we have freelance web developer and I wanted to put this in its own category because it's a very different type of role than working for a company you can be a freelancer with any of the one any of the previous roles that we've talked about but in the world of freelancing it's about finding tools that allow you to build websites and applications very quickly and efficiently you also need to be able to communicate with clients and manage projects so if you're a solo freelancer then you you need to be everything the UI ux person front-end developer back-end devops and everything else however you usually work on smaller scale projects and don't need a lot of the same tools that you would in the industry for instance most Freelancers don't use something like Docker at least in my in my own experience I can't speak for everybody so content Management systems are huge and freelancing because they allow you to get projects out quick with a lot of functionality including having your clients be able to log into an admin area and add their own content so WordPress is huge in the freelance world but you also have newer headless content Management Systems like strappy and sanity.io that are also gaining a lot of traction with Freelancers and smaller agencies and then static site generators like Gatsby and Astro are also gaining popularity because there are other tools that allow you to build very high performance websites in a very short amount of time and when I say static I don't mean there's no Dynamic functionality you can still work with apis and headless content Management systems and things like that even though it's a static site generator you just don't have a server so website Site Builders are another tool that some Freelancers take advantage of because again they get things done quickly these are usually the more business oriented Freelancers that build more I'd say simple brochure like websites and not really complex applications they're more concerned with getting the you know getting the client customers rather than creating crazy you know complex Technologies so uh what else you need good communication skills with clients I know a lot of developers have social issues including myself I struggled and still struggle with social anxiety however if you want something bad enough and you're passionate enough you can find those skills inside of you all right you still you need to know how to Market yourself as well so next we have an e-commerce developer obviously they specialize in building e-commerce sites or online shopping platforms they deal with payment gateways customer management systems they play a crucial role in enabling businesses to sell products or services online and custom e-commerce websites can be pretty daunting especially because you're dealing with money and transactions and if you if you do take on custom e-commerce projects just make sure you know what you're doing I know people that specialize in creating custom platforms for businesses and they can make up to five six figures just for from a single project and you could use existing platforms like woocommerce and Shopify obviously you won't make as much money per project but it's a lot less of a headache than creating them from scratch so you'll need to learn like I said payment gateways like stripe and PayPal user accounts and authentication are obviously really important just the overall flow of an e-commerce site from product pages to inventory checkout shopping cart flows refunds customer management and the list just goes on and on so there's a ton of logistics that you just don't have with other types of projects so it's a good area to really specialize in and like I said you could also work with existing platforms like Shopify especially if you're freelancing so the next one is is much different than the traditional web developer role so this is a web security specialist but it's still very very important and related to web development so web security Specialists are responsible for protecting websites and web applications from cyber attacks they're also responsible for identifying and fixing security vulnerabilities and this is a very important role especially with all the data breaches that have been happening lately and if you're interested in this role you'll need to learn about web security vulnerabilities and how to prevent them SQL injections cross-site scripting things like that you'll also need to learn about penetration testing and how to perform security Audits and you you'll use tools like the burp Suite a wasp zap and many others that will kind of help you find and prevent these these security issues and you'll also be conducting security Audits and need understand certain security compliance this is really out of my wheelhouse I would say out of all of these this is the one that I have the least experience with so next we have a web slash mobile game developer and these are really two different categories web and mobile native mobile game development is a bit more intricate and you can use you know c-sharp with the unity game engine for instance that's a popular combination if you do want to stick to web games and JavaScript you can try the phaser game engine for 2D games in the browser and this is a very Niche area of web development but it is also a lot of fun so you'll Master game logic game physics game design principles you'll create immersive gameplay experiences that challenge and entertain users and cross browser and cross-device compatibility is obviously extremely important as well as performance optimization nobody likes laggy games so next we have a blockchain developer they specialize in building decentralized applications and smart contracts using blockchain Technologies like ethereum binance smart chain polka dot I'd say stick to ethereum for now this field involves creating secure and transparent applications that leverage blockchains distributed Ledger capabilities and you'll learn how to write smart contracts using languages like solidity or rust and you learn all about the principles and the tools used in decentralized finance or D5 and there's libraries you can use like web3js to interact with blockchain networks from web applications and you want to be aware of blockchain security best practices because obviously blockchain transactions are irreversible so the next one is it seems really fun to me it's not something I have much experience with but it's augmented reality and virtual reality developer so this is where you create immersive experiences that blend the digital and the physical world and they use Technologies like Arc kit arcore webvr to build web applications that enhance reality or create entirely virtual environments and this specialization requires expertise in 3D modeling spatial Computing and interaction design so there's special AR VR Frameworks like Unity 3D and A-frame you should also get a handle on like I said 3D modeling and animation to create assets for AR VR environments and you can also Implement gesture recognition and hand tracking for user input so really really cool stuff next we have a pwa or Progressive web app developer and they specialize in creating web applications that offer a native app-like experience across different devices and platforms so pwas are known for their offline capabilities fast load times and responsiveness and it really combines web development skills with mobile app development principles so it's almost like a middle ground between a web app developer and a mobile app developer so you'll need to understand and Implement things like service workers to enable offline functionality and background synchronization it'll create web app manifest files to define the app's appearance and behavior Implement caching strategies to optimize the app's performance and reduce load times and enable push notifications to engage users and re-engage them with the app so next we have Internet of Things or iot developer so these developers specialize in connecting physical devices and objects to the internet allowing them to communicate and share data so they create web-based applications that control and monitor iot devices enabling Automation and data-driven decision making and I think this is really cool because I have a ton of smart home stuff and I'm always curious what kind of apis are available and what I could do with them I just haven't had really had the time to get into it so you'll familiarize yourself with iot communication protocols like mqtt and even HTTP and then learn how to interface with the hardware with sensors actuators microcontrollers Etc and then utilize cloud-based iot platforms like AWS iot you'll also set up data streaming pipelines to collect and analyze data from these devices so lastly we have a chatbot developer and with the advancement of AI chat Bots are absolutely huge right now chatbot developers specialize in creating conversational agents or chat Bots that interact with users through either text or voice interfaces and they design and develop chatbot applications for a variety of purposes including customer support e-commerce and informational or information retrieval and then natural language processing or NLP is something that you really need to get into it's a subfield of AI that focuses on the interaction between computers and human language and it involves the development of algorithms and models that enable computers to understand interpret and generate human language in a valuable way so you'll learn NLP techniques and libraries like NLT a Spacey or tensorflow for language understanding you'll also explore voice-based chatbot development for platforms like Amazon Alexa Google assistant and so on so you'll develop chat Bots that can maintain contacts and engage in meaningful conversations rather than just asking a question and getting an answer you can you know Converse back and forth like you can with chat GPT for instance all right guys so there you have it there's so many areas of web development that you can get into so take some time sit down really think about what you want to do what are you passionate about if you've always loved video games maybe you want to get into web game development if you love to create things and maybe get into UI ux design if you love to help people maybe you want to get into web security there's just so many options and I think that I think these days people just want to master everything right away and it's just not plausible so it's worth it to really figure out what you want to specialize in you know where do you want to give your value with the with everything that's happening with AI I think a lot of the the real generalized stuff is going to just be shipped out to Ai and I think that people's value it's really going to come in in certain areas certain fields and roles so so just something to think about hope you guys enjoyed the video and I will see you next time

Channel: Traversy Media

Views: 124,552

Keywords: web developer, web developer career path, web development, become a web developer, full stack developer, frontend developer

Id: 1_gLbLPx2T8

Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2023