Becoming a fullstack web developer requires you to cover a lot of skills. For beginners it’s often not easy to find the right learning path and to gain quick result. At first sight it might be overwhelming to understand what you need to learn and how everything fits together at the end.

This post will give you an overview of technologies you may consider to learn for being a fullstack developer in 2019 and beyond. We’ll start to take a look at the foundation and programming languages and then move forward to more advanced topics like frameworks and additional tools.

This list will provide guidance to find your path through the web development jungle in 2019. Together with a short description of the relevant topics this post contains link to great learning resources so that you can start quickly to expand your skill-set.

Foundation

The best way to begin your web development career with is to get very good at HTML & CSS which is the basis for everything else.

HTML & CSS

The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is essential for every website you’re implementing. By using HTL you’re defining and structuring the content of a website by using a simple markup syntax.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple way for adding styling to your websites (e.g. adding fonts, colors, layout etc).

Having understand HTML you should definitely move on to CSS and make sure to understand the basics. HTML and CSS are two essentials every web developer needs to know. This was valid in 2018 and will also be valid in 2019 …

Course Recommendations:

The Web Developer Bootcamp

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The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0

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Build Responsive Real World Websites with CSS3 v2.0

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Programming Languages

JavaScript

JavaScript is the essential building block for adding dynamic features to your website. The JavaScript language is an implementation of the underlying ECMAScript specification. Learning JavaScript from the ground up is an essential milestone in starting your web development career. For many frameworks on the front-end (Angular, React, Vue.js) and on the back-end side (Node.js) the knowledge of JavaScript is a prerequisite.

The basics of the JavaScript language are easy to learn. However, as the ECMAScript specification evolves, more and more advanced features are added to the language like asynchronous functions, shared memory, and atomic operations.

If you’re starting with JavaScript it might be overwhelming to read about all those advanced JS concept. Here you should focus on the basics first and then move on to the more advanced concepts afterwards.

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The Complete JavaScript Course: Build a Real-World Project

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TypeScript

With the rise of Angular TypeScript has gained a lot of traction too. If you’re planning to learn Angular you should definitely take a look at TypeScript first.

TypeScript is an addition to JavaScript and therefore is always used together with JavaScript to enable features like type checking.

TypeScript has an excellent tooling, especially if your work with code editors like Visual Studio Code. Here you’ll find functionalities automatic importing of modules.

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Understanding TypeScript

Don’t limit the Usage of TypeScript to Angular 2! Learn the Basics, its Features, Workflows and how to use it!

Python

Python is one of the top programming languages requested by companies in 2018 / 2019. If you haven’t added Python to your programming skill set yet it’s now the perfect time to start learning.

With Python you’re able to cover a wide range of use cases. You can implement command line scripts, GUI application and web applications. Furthermore the Python programming language is currently fueling scientific computing.

If you’re learning Python for web development you should then take a look at Python web programming frameworks like Django or Flask.

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Complete Python Bootcamp: Go from zero to hero in Python

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Front-end Frameworks

Frameworks – both for front-end and back-end development – makes developing common functionality easier and faster. However before starting to use a framework you should always try to gain a profound understanding of the underlying technology stack (e.g. JavaScript). This will help you to learn a framework and understand the concept.

Fist, let’s take a look at the most important front-end frameworks in web development:

Angular

Angular is a framework for building client applications in HTML and JavaScript / TypeScript. The framework combines declarative templates, dependency injection, end to end tooling, and integrated best practices to solve development challenges.

In 2018 Angular has been one of the most popular frameworks for building single-page web applications. For Angular developers it was a very exciting year with new major framework updates (version 6 and version 7). Many new features have been added and Angular is gaining more and more traction.

If you’re looking for a new JS web development framework to learn in 2019 you should consider to take a deeper look at Angular. More and more companies start to make use of Angular and the Angular team will come up with many more features and releases in 2019.

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Angular 7 – The Complete Guide

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React

React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. React makes it painless to create interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state in your application, and React will efficiently update and render just the right components when your data changes. Declarative views make your code more predictable and easier to debug. The framework is fully component-based. You can build encapsulated components that manage their own state, then compose them to make complex UIs.Since component logic is written in JavaScript instead of templates, you can easily pass rich data through your app and keep state out of the DOM.

React 16 has been released in September 2017. Many more improvements have been added with version 16.3.0 (new lifecycle and context API), 16.4.0 (pointer events) and 16.6.0 (lazy, memo, etc) in 2018. Also version 2.0 of Create React App has been released and is now supporting Babel 7 and Sass out-of-the-box.

React enables you to create really powerful single-page application. If you haven’t done so before you should definitely add React to your skill-set. If you’re planning to develop more complex web application with React you should also consider to take a look at Redux. By using Redux you’ll be able to use central state management in your application which makes data handling across components much more easier.

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Modern React With Redux

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React 16+ – The Complete Guide (incl. Redux)

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Node with React: Fullstack Web Development

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Vue.js

2018 has been a great year for Vue with an explosion in growth. Vue is extremely easy to learn and especially for smaller-sized projects a perfect choice. The learning curve is extremely steep and you can expect to quickly see great results.

From a total of 78k stars on Github Vue has evolved to 120k stars at the end of 2018. More and more companies are adding Vue.js to their stacks and the demand for Vue.js developers is growing constantly.

Course Recommendations:

Vue.js 2 – The Complete Guide (incl. Vue Router & Vuex)

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The Ultimate Vue.js 2 Developer Course

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Back-end Frameworks

There are many options you can choose from when selecting a back-end framework for your web project. However, in the following I’ll narrow it down to two options, one for the JS world (Node.js) and one for the Python world (Django).

As the name suggest, back-end frameworks are running on the back-end (on the server) and are generating HTML, JSON (etc.) for your website in a dynamic way depending on the URL your user visits.

If you’re only developing on the front-end side of a project it’s not needed to add a back-end framework to your skill-set. However, to gain a profound understanding of how everything is fitting together you should at least consider to understand the very basics of a back-end framework.

Node.js enables you to execute JavaScript code at the back-end and is extremely powerful especially if Node.js is used together with the Express middle-ware.

In order to start with Node.js you should first make sure that you have a sound knowledge of the JavaScript programming language. This will ensure that you can understand the core concepts of Node quickly.

Course Recommendations:

NodeJS – The Complete Guide (incl. MVC, REST APIs, GraphQL)

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The Complete Node.js Developer Course

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Django

Django is completely written in Python. If you like the elegance of the Python programming language you’ll like the Django. Django is a powerful framework and serves you for a wide range of use cases. However, if you have gained a profound understanding of Python, Django is easy to learn and you’ll discover the pragmatic approach very quickly.

If you would like to use Python and the back-end side of your project you should not definitely take a look at Django and start learning it.

Course Recommendations:

Python and Django Full Stack Web Developer Bootcamp

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Misc

Git

Git is by far the most widely used version control system for any kind of source code.

If you are working as a developer today you will sooner or later get into contact with Git and GitHub. As a version control system Git is used by many companies already and most of the frameworks and extensions presented in that article are also hosted on GitHub.

To complete you skill-set as a web developer you should consider to learn at least the basics of Git.

Course Recommendations:

Git Complete – The Definitive Step-by-Step Guide To Git

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Machine Learning

Machine learning is one of the top trending topics of 2018 for developers. In the coming years, there won’t be a single industry in the world untouched by Machine Learning. With frameworks like Tensorflow.js Machine Learning is now entering the field of web development as well.

Regardless of weather you’re a front-end, back-end or full-stack developer you should consider to add Machine Learning capabilities to you skill-set know to prepare for upcoming demands.

Combining the power of Machine Learning with a programming language like JavaScript makes it easy to enter this new area of expertise. Besides JavaScript making Machine Learning easier to understand, it also opens new horizons for apps that you can build. Rather than being limited to deploying Python code on the server for running your ML code, you can build single-page apps, or even browser extensions that run interesting algorithms, which can give you the possibility of developing a completely novel use case.

Course Recommendations:

Machine Learning with Javascript

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Conclusion

Web development skills are in very high demand right now and – if you have not started yet – it’s the perfect time to start learning web development right know.

Even if you’re already an experience web developer you should invest some time to keep up with latest technologies and frameworks.

This article should give you a guidance for your learning path and at the same time is providing you with resources which helps you to get started quickly.