How Learning Web Development Changed My Life in One Year
Becoming a software developer changed my life in many aspects I never thought possible. This path became easy for me due to the generosity of the tech community. To pay my debt to this amazing community, I've decided to write down my experience here on a series of blog posts.
If my writings can help and encourage even 1 person to continue, I call it a win.
Back story from school
I was always fascinated with computers and smartphones as a kid. So, I studied computer science in high school, and software during my Associates. But, to be honest, I couldn't create a single piece of software at the end of that 5-year study!
School was all theory. 60% scattered technical lessons (design, mobile development, web, different languages basics). 40% nontechnical useless nonsense. It was cool, and I liked the lessons, but I was more into action I would say.
So after 5 years of studying, it had become obvious to me that school wasn't actually going to help me get into the software development world. So in a classic act, I quit school!
Till today I still haven't told anyone in my family circle about what I did to school. I was a full fund top-ranked student. So, if anyone had found out about my little secret, I had to endure hearing nonsense advice that I was ruining my life. And I simply didn't feel like it at all. I had more important stuff I wanted to focus on.
How the learning journey started
With school out of the way I could devote all my time and energy to teaching myself how to code. It wasn't that straightforward though, I spent 3 months learning WordPress from a video course only to realize I hated it.
While I was into writing code and building logic I had full control over, WordPress was about making things work with minimal effort, no code, no full control, no actual logic building…. Felt like a waste of time back then, even though it wasn't.
During that course I also learned the essentials of frontend development (HTML, CSS, JS). However much more important than that, I learned "how to search" and "how to learn" as a developer. (Yeah, that course actually covered those topics)
Switching to React
I had no idea what React actually was, I'd just heard some rumors about it. So I searched on YouTube, watched a few tutorials and got familiar with the syntax and the overall idea. And I fell in Love With It .
Finding React felt like a breakthrough for me. Previously, I was creating custom WordPress themes with HTML, CSS, and adding interactions using jQuery and its selectors - which was this long, boring, repetitive process.
But React! It transformed that whole workflow into something smooth, clean, and actually enjoyable. The idea of writing one component and reusing it everywhere it was needed, while having full control over what I was writing, made it look like heaven in my eyes.
At that point, I searched for a comprehensive front-end development roadmap and followed it step by step. The approach I took—systematically breaking down skills, finding quality resources, and staying consistent—is something I've written about extensively in this blog post.
So I won't dive too deep into the learning methodology here, but what made the biggest difference was finding high-quality YouTube tutorials. I primarily followed two channels: The Net Ninja by Shaun and Codevolution by Vishwas. Both Offer updated, well-structured content that I honestly found more practical than many paid courses I'd encountered.
Learning React:
I learned React using Net Ninja tutorials and actually understood it from Codevolution tutorials. Net Ninja's React tutorial was a project-based tutorial, so I first learned building SPAs (Single Page Applications) with all React had to offer. Then Codevolution's React tutorial dived deeper into how things worked under the hood. That deep understanding I got from React has been helping me every time I get stuck till today.
Speed was my priority, because I needed a job ASAP. I learned React basics in a week or two and did a todo list using it. Every time I learned a new concept such as hooks, states, data fetching, routing, etc… I made sure to create a project using it.
These are some of the early projects I did with React. I made sure to write clear and structured README files for them, I also made them live. I wanted to showcase them in my resume no matter how small:
Learning React Libraries
As I said getting a job was my priority, I made sure to learn as many packages that I knew I'd need when working on a real project. Things like react-router-dom, redux, react-query, tailwind, material-ui:
Starting with Next.js Framework
I managed to master all a junior needed to know from React in one month. According to the roadmap that I had and questions that I'd ask other developers on LinkedIn, I decided that it was time to pick a React Framework. Next.js was just very on demand and had just released v13 and its new app router. Everyone was talking about it. So I gave it a try. And in the first try, I again fell in love .
I enjoyed that things were getting easier and easier each time. React felt much easier than WordPress. Now Next.js took it to a whole new level. It felt like my savior at that time. No more react-router-dom, instead we had file-based routing. Server Side rendering, making IPL (Initial Page Load) much faster, and dozens of other features.
Like React, it took me almost a week or two to learn the basics of Next.js. The first project I created using Next.js was a user list application. It fetched user data from jsonplaceholder API:
And the second project I built was my own first ever portfolio website:
I was ready to put myself out there and get that first job.