What a web developer actually does

Welcome! If you've never written a line of code before, you're in exactly the right place. This course assumes you know nothing about programming. All you need is a computer and some curiosity.

Before we install anything, let's talk about what web development actually is and what you'll be able to do by the end of this pathway.

Every website you use was built by someone. The page you're reading right now, the online shop where you bought your last pair of shoes, the app you use to check the weather. Somebody wrote the code that makes them look and work the way they do.

Web development is simply the job of building those things. A web developer writes instructions that a browser can understand, and the browser turns those instructions into the page you see.

That's really it. It sounds big, but it's made up of small pieces that you'll learn one at a time.

You'll hear these two words a lot, so it helps to know what they mean early on.

The front end is everything you see and interact with in the browser. The text, the colors, the buttons, what happens when you click something. If you can see it, it's probably front end.

The back end is the part you don't see. It's the code running on a server somewhere that stores your account, remembers your shopping cart and sends you a confirmation email.

A good way to picture it is a restaurant. The front end is the dining room where guests sit and order. The back end is the kitchen where the food is actually made. Guests never see the kitchen, but without it nobody gets fed.

In this pathway we'll focus on the front end. It's where most people start because you can see the result of your work right away, and that makes learning a lot more fun.

People often imagine developers typing fast in a dark room, writing perfect code from memory. The reality is a lot calmer than that.

A normal day usually involves:

• Reading code someone else wrote and figuring out how it works
• Writing a little bit of new code
• Testing it in the browser to see if it does what you expected
• Fixing the things that don't work, which happens all the time
• Looking things up online, over and over again

That last point is important. Every developer searches for answers all day long. Nobody remembers everything. If you ever feel like you should know something by heart, you don't. Knowing how to find the answer is the real skill.

Learning is much easier when you're building something real, so that's exactly what we'll do. Over the next few courses you'll build your own personal website, step by step:

1. Getting set up (this course): you'll install the tools and create your project folder
2. HTML: you'll write the content of your page, like your name, a short bio and some links
3. CSS: you'll make it look good and work on a phone
4. Git and GitHub: you'll save your progress and publish your site so anyone can visit it
5. JavaScript: you'll make the page interactive

By the end you'll have a real website with a real address that you can show to friends, family or a future employer. And you'll understand every line of it.

A few tips before we start:

• Type the code yourself. Copying and pasting is tempting, but typing it out helps your brain remember it.
• Break things on purpose. Change a value and see what happens. You can't damage anything, and you'll learn a lot.
• Take breaks. If something isn't making sense, go for a walk. It's amazing how often the answer shows up when you come back.
• Don't rush. It's not a race. Going slowly and understanding things beats going fast and being confused.