What is Web Development?

You’ve probably heard of coding, or programming (actually I’m sure you have!). Well, web development is just a type of coding - specifically, coding simple static websites, full-fledged web pages, e-commerce sites, or web applications (websites that do stuff). It is one of the most common forms of programming in this day and age, and a great place to start for beginner programmers.

According to Wikipedia

Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet or an intranet. Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, and social network services.

There are three main languages that are part of front-end programming: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Let’s have a quick look at what each of them is:

HTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. This is what makes up the actual content of the website.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <title>My Awesome Site</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Hello World!</h1>
        <p>Jatin is <i>really</i>, <b><i>really</i></b> awesome.</p>
        <img src="assets/hello-world.jpg" alt="Hello World">
    </body>
</html>

As you can see, it has some normal text but then also some other bits of code. This is called markup - hence the name Hypertext Markup Language.

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and controls what a webpage looks like. Without CSS, the entire web would look something like this:

Here is a snippet of CSS:

h1 {
    color: red;
    font-size: 70px;
    font-family: sans-serif;
    text-align: center;
}
p {
    color: orange;
    font-size: 20px;
    font-family: sans-serif;
    text-align: center;
}
img {
    width: 100px;

JavaScript

JavaScript is what makes web pages do stuff. It has stuff like if/else statements and functions (which you will learn about later). Here is a snippet of JavaScript:

var x = 7;

if(x < 10) {
    console.log("x is a one-digit number.");
} else {
    console.log("x has more that one digit.");
}

JavaScript is much harder to master than HTML and CSS as it doesn’t just display stuff - it does stuff. JavaScript can also change the HTML and CSS of a webpage.

You will eventually need to learn all three of these languages if you want to make a website because they work together (you don’t always need JavaScript but it’s good to know, especially for web-apps). I recommend learning them in this order:

HTML
CSS
JavaScript

In HTML you can define elements that have classes or IDs, which you can manipulate with CSS or JavaScript.