You ever watch the movie, Twister?
There’s a scene at the end where they’re trapped in this small shed, tied to some pipes as a Tornado rolls right over them, tearing the shed to pieces.
Debris everywhere.
Legs flying in the air.
Complete chaos.
But, there’s a moment where, Helen Hunt, one of the main characters, can see all the way to the top of the tornado. And, it’s nice calm, blue sky.
Almost peaceful.
That’s sometimes how I feel.
As I’ve talked about… all the chaos and change coming so rapidly in our industry. There’s so much to learn and so little time to learn it.
Have I learned enough?
Won’t it all be obsolete in a year, anyway?
How do I keep up?
It can feel like a tornado swirling around you.
But, there is a way to find the “eye” of that storm. The calm, almost peaceful place where you feel confident, secure and excited.
Tom on Quora said it perfectly:
“[Web development] is difficult, sure, and the technology is an always moving target as the frameworks change so rapidly. But fundamentals of design and engineering don’t change. So I didn’t have anything to fear regarding that, it was a matter of learning how to apply those using the flavor of the day.”
It’s easy to get caught in the chaos…
When you focus too much on the “flavor of the day”.
The latest “ermagerd” framework.
Or, shiny, new language.
And, you believe the Medium-heads that say you “have to learn every single one or you’re like a total noob and will never get any work”… blah, blah, blah.
No.
Focus on fundamentals.
And, you’ll be fine.
Another thing that’s true, but unpopular to say, is that despite all dire predictions to the contrary, the core stack for a web developer hasn’t changed much.
The most used languages for websites are still:
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL.
I know… BLASPHEMY!
But, it’s just statistical fact.
All these new languages and frameworks are great.
Node, Angular, React, Go, etc.
In fact, do learn them, at some point.
But, the majority of websites still run plain, old, vanilla, boring (read: calm and peaceful) HTML, CSS, JS, PHP and MySQL.
So, learn those first.
And, frankly, if you’d just stuck with those all this time…
The chaos wouldn’t really have bothered you much.
In any case, do what you want. I’m gonna sit over here in the blue sky, sippin’ my rum and coke… taking all the work the Mediums-heads are “too good” for.
If you wanna chase tornadoes, it’s all yours.
Of course, if you are like me, then my coding curriculum is exactly what you need to learn that core stack. PHP, MySQL, OOP, HTML, CSS, JS… it’s all in there.
And, you can get started for nothing.
All the deets on that are here: https://www.skillshare.com/r/user/johnmorris
Later,
John
