How Long Does It REALLY Take To Become A Web Developer?

How long does it REALLY take to become a web developer?

That's kind of like asking how long does it take to become a pianist?

When are you actually considered a pianist?

Is it when you press a key on a piano?

Is it when you play your first scale?

Play your first song?

Play a certain level of song?

It's not entirely clear.

"Pianist" is more of a way to identify someone that plays the piano.

Just like "web developer" is a way to identify someone that makes websites.

But neither of these exactly describe how good the individual is at the craft.

A better way of having a form of measurement is to:

• Take into account a desired level

• The average that it takes for someone to get there

• Factors you can manipulate to achieve the goal faster

Like how long does it take to complete grade 5 piano? Or grade 10 piano?

What factors influence the time it takes?

• Hours committed to focused practice

• The instructor you have

• The approach you take for practice

• Experience wth another instrument

• And so on

Or how long does it take to become a junior web developer?

What is the average amount of time it takes for someone to get to this level?

What factors can you influence for this to take less time?

• Hours committed to focused learning

• The instructors you're learning from

• The approach you take for learning

• Building your own projects

• Prior programming experience

• And so on

This way there's an actual goal post, an average amount of time it takes someone to reach this goal post and factors that you can manipulate for this to take less time.

You can do this for all levels of web development — junior, mid-level and senior.

The greater your level, the more that you are capable of.

At a senior level you can build clean and simple solutions to complex problems, have this solution maintainable, and scale to an unlimited amount of users.

At a junior level you can mostly come up with solutions that work for simpler problems, often where these solutions work but aren't necessarily the best solution, and you'll be missing knowledge behind how to architect apps for scale.

Kind of like how an advanced pianist can play incredibly challenging songs and play them exceptionally well…

Whereas a novice can play basic songs at best and might not even play those very well.

And in both cases the novice will likely need outside expertise to help steer them in the right direction.

When it comes to how long it takes to learn these skills, I'd say you need to further analyze what does it actually mean to learn these skills?

In order for me to know HTML, does that mean I can put together markup that's structured properly and renders the way I expect on a screen?

Does it mean knowing every single HTML tag that I can create and all of the different attributes I can assign to them?

Because the former might take you 5 to 10 minutes, whereas the latter might take you multiple hours.

However, the trap I see when people are first learning web development is that they're often taking the latter approach…

And it's not even their fault.

This for some reason has become the default when putting together tutorials and courses on anything software development related.

For some reason there's this belief around if something is "comprehensive", then it's more valuable.

But this is not the case.

Who cares if you know every single possible feature of something…

Especially if you'll only end up using only a fraction of it and therefore forget all the rest.

Comprehensiveness is something that plagues software development tutorials and courses.

It's not comprehensiveness that's valuable, but rather being able to think about a web development problem and solve it.

It's not about knowing everything.

If you rely on the amount of information you store about something instead of simply knowing the foundation and having a system to solve any problem you encounter…

Then it will take you much longer to make progress.

It's like someone trying to complete grade 5 piano and their approach is to learn every possible piano song that's considered to be at this level.

That would be a silly approach and isn't a good measure of someone at this level.

A better measurement would be can you give this individual a grade 5 level piano song and are they able to learn it and play it right.

Does that not sound like a better approach?

Yet when it comes to learning web development, this tends to be taught with the equivalent of learning every grade 5 level piano piece if you're trying to reach that level.

It makes no sense.

This is the "comprehensive" approach that instructors seem to have defaulted to for whatever reason.

Not sure if it's because they see other people teaching this way and decided therefore this is simply how it's supposed to be done…I couldn't tell you.

But don't you think it makes more sense to consider someone a junior level developer if they're able to take a problem that a junior level developer should be able to solve and they solve it?

That seems to make a lot more sense.

Not "have you memorized how to create a file input in HTML"…

The better question is if I were to give you the problem of "create a file input in HTML", could you get it done?

That's the proper way to approach learning this stuff in my eyes.

Let's take an example of 2 developers and assign them the task of building something, and let's say this task involves solving problems neither of them encountered before:

If the first developer was focused on comprehensiveness and relies on whether or not they've encountered the problem before and have a solution saved somewhere, then they will struggle with completing the task.

Whereas if the second developer was focused on learning how to think and how to figure out coming up with good solutions to a web development problem, then they'll be far better equipped to complete the task.

This is because they're not relying on what they've solved before, instead they have a method that they can follow to come up with solutions to problems they haven't encountered yet.

And this second developer might have even spent half the amount of time learning web development compared to the first and will still be more effective at solving the same problems — simply because they follow a better approach.

If you take the approach to learning of the first developer, then you're taking an approach to problem solving that's reliant on you having already having a solution to the problem before you've encountered it…

Which isn't exactly problem solving.

Whereas with the second developer, the problem doesn't matter since they know what they need to do to figure it out — they've learned the skill of problem solving in web development which is the real key, not how much stuff you've memorized.

If both of these developers encounter a completely unique problem that they've never run into before, which do you think will be more effective at solving it?

Obviously the second developer.

That's the real secret here.

Even myself as a developer that's been doing this for over 10 years, every day I run into problems where I don't have an immediate memorized solution.

This is reality in the real world as a web developer.

The real skill with web development is having the ability to figure it out…

Then the more you do this, the more confidence you gain in your ability to figure it out.

The reason why developers often struggle with things like imposter syndrome is because they feel they need to have all these countless things memorized.

This isn't the case, no one has everything memorized.

What experienced developers do have is the confidence that they can be given any problem and they'll be able to figure it out…

And the more problems they solve, the more evidence they have to support this and therefore the more confidence they have.

To rid yourself of imposter syndrome, you need to look at web development from a lens of "if I'm given a problem, do I have what it takes to figure it out?"…

Instead of "I haven't encountered this specific thing before, now I need to go through another tutorial to learn it"…

Really what you need is a foundation around certain tools — which means learning enough about them that if you're given a problem where these tools come into play, then you can figure it out.

Put simply, it's all about "do you know enough to figure it out"?

And to expand on this even more:

It's having the ability to come up with multiple solutions to the same problem and then being able to evaluate the solutions you came up with and determine the best one.

Or even determining that none of the solutions are great and that there might be something even better that you need to come up with which happens too.

So web development is really about your ability to solve a problem effectively.

This is why I think that tutorials and courses that focus on being extremely comprehensive are a complete waste…

Because they're not teaching you how to think…

How to effectively solve problems…

They're teaching you how to memorize a bunch of stuff where you'll only end up using a fraction of what you learned.

Web development isn't about knowing everything because that's literally impossible.

It's about "I need to get this final outcome, what is the best solution that I can come up with to get there and what resources do I need to figure it out"?

Then you can pull up this documentation and that documentation…ask AI this and that…dig more into this and that…and eventually you come up with a few good solutions to the problem.

You'll never have all the answers.

You can be developing for over 30 years and you still won't have all the answers.

What you hopefully will have is the ability to very quickly come up with solutions to unique problems you've never encountered before because of all of the experience that you have.

Therefore, when considering how long does it really take to become a web developer?

I'd say it depends on the approach you take to learning and where is the goal post?

And it also depends on have you ever programmed before?

How many hours are you able to dedicate per day to learning?

How focused are you?

Are you easily distracted?

Are you learning through a well structured course made by an experienced instructor who teaches well?

Are you trying to be self-taught?

Are you learning by going through random tutorials?

Are you trying to build your own projects to cement your learning?

These are all important factors when considering the amount of time it really takes.

To narrow it down, let's consider the amount of time it take to become a junior web developer.

First let's consider the average amount of time this takes.

The average self-taught beginner that has no prior programming experience, commits about 20 hours per week, tends to reach a junior-ready level in roughly 18 months (1 and a half years).

Given this, let's take a few different factors, and assign some weights to them.

First there's the factor of programming experience, to this I'll assign a weight of 0.5 if the individual had prior programming experience.

Next factor I'll consider is learning efficiency, to this I'll assign a weight of 0.7 if the individual is focused on problem-solving and building projects early as their learning approach.

And the last factor I'll consider is hours per week dedicated to focused learning.

From here you can put this into a rough formula like the following:

months = 18 / (weekly hours / 20) × (1 - prior experience factor) × learning efficiency

This means if you're dedicating 40 hours per week, have had prior programming experience and you're learning efficiently by focusing on problem solving and building projects, then you can expect something like the following:

months = 18 / (40 / 20) × (1 - 0.5) × 0.7

months = 18 / 2 × 0.5 × 0.7

months = 3.15

So a little over 3 months to learn web development (which seems reasonable given these factors).

Or if there is no prior programming experience, then it would look more like:

months = 18 / (40 / 20) × (1 - 0) × 0.7

months = 18 / 2 × 1 × 0.7

months = 6.3

So in this case a bit over 6 months to get to the level of a junior developer.

The idea here is that you can greatly speed up the time that it takes to get to a certain level with certain factors weighed in.

(Also you can always have fun with this and add more factors and make the equation more complex if you want — I just kept it simple)

A very notable factor here is the amount of time that you are willing to dedicate.

If you dedicate twice the amount of time that the average individual is willing to, then guess what?

It will take you half the amount of time to reach your goal compared to the average.

If you already dedicated a lot of time to learning programming before, then again it'll take you half the time to reach your goal.

And if you're learning things in a more efficient way, then again you'll shave off a lot of the time that it takes.

This is all there is to trying to figure out how long it takes to reach a certain objective.

• See what's the average

• See what the average does

• Determine what factors you can manipulate to make things go faster

• Put together a general equation to get a rough idea of the time it will take

• Then execute

If you're willing to do much more than the average, then you'll also make progress many times faster than the average.

Even when we look at the example of having no prior programming experience, but you dedicate 40 hours per week to focused learning and you learn more efficiently…

Suddenly you've reached the level of a junior developer in nearly a third of the amount of time it takes on average.

Instead of one and a half years to achieve the goal, you achieved it in just over 6 months simply by manipulating a few factors.

That's all there really is to it.

Determine what's the average amount of time to achieve the goal, see what the average does, and then simply DO MORE to achieve the goal MUCH FASTER.

The average person doesn't make even close to the amount of progress that they could.

Most people are distracted, endlessly scrolling their phones and have the attention span of a squirrel on crack.

In the age of distractions, it has never been easier to destroy the average…

As long as you manage to control your mind and not fall into what rots away the brain and attention span of the average person.

See what factors you can manipulate in your favour, and suddenly you can learn anything in a fraction of the amount of time it takes the average person.

It also helps when you can clearly see the goal and what you need to dp specifically to achieve it.

Then the rest is up to you executing the plan.

Remember:

When learning web development, it's all about your ability to solve problems…

Not how many things you've managed to memorize…and not by falling into tutorial hell.

This is why building your own apps after learning some concepts is the best way to improve.

Because by building something unique from skills you've learned, you're practicing problem solving which is what actually helps you make progress…not trying to memorize a bunch of crap you won't use.

Going through comprehensive tutorials and courses is usually a huge waste of time.

Again, you don't need comprehensiveness, you need PROBLEM SOLVING!

If it's a junior developer level you want to achieve first, then simply follow the equation I outlined before as a general guide:

months = 18 / (weekly hours / 20) × (1 - prior experience factor) × learning efficiency

Then feel free to play with it by adding other factors you can think of to see what you could do to get to this goal faster.

After that it's all about actually executing the plan.

By knowing how to approach learning web development, having a clear vision of what you need to do to get there and how long it should take…

You'll be far better equipped to reach the goal in a fraction of the amount of time it takes the average person.

So here's what you should do next:

• Figure out the goal you're looking to reach (e.g. junior web developer level)

• See what's the average amount of time this takes someone

• See what the average does

• Determine what factors you can manipulate to make things go faster

• Put together a general equation to get a rough idea of the time it will take

• Remember to focus on practicing problem solving and not trying to memorize everything

• And avoid tutorial hell by actually building your own projects to further cement your learning and get better at problem solving

With this you should have a great idea of how long it should really take you to learn web development.

Anyway, that is everything for this one. Hope you enjoyed the letter and have a fantastic rest of your day.

- Bryan