JavaScript Roadmap to Becoming a 100k/Year Developer
JavaScript Roadmap to Becoming a 100k/Year Developer
If you want to skyrocket your career in software development, and you want to do this in JavaScript, compliment, you made a good choice. Despite that, this journey will be sometimes hard, difficult, and challenging. Remember, don’t leave. If you can reach a good amount of experience, your revenue will be over 100k / year. So, let’s dive into how to reach this goal, and build something beautiful.
First, you have to be sure that you want to learn JavaScript as the language to skyrocket your career, as the most effective one. If you are not sure, remember that it is the most popular programming language according to the stackoverflow.com Developer Survey, and is also the language with the largest variety of use-cases. Other doubts? No? Let’s start.
Basics as a pure language
The first thing that you have to master, is the basics of JavaScript. What are? They are expressions, types, and variables. When you understood these basic concepts, you can dive into deeper things. Learn about functions, loops, scope, and arrays. This is almost everything you need to master to know the basics of this language. When you know these things, you know all the easiest concepts, and you can perform basic operations, but only on a console. So, you need to start to use JavaScript for what it has been built: handle the DOM
The time needed: 1 week
Basics as DOM manipulator
JavaScript can handle in a really easy way the DOM of a webpage. So, then you can learn how to select an element, with operations like getElementById, then to update a page when a button is clicked. JavaScript can make a webpage dynamic. So, you can create some costume data, and generate output according to them. An interesting small project could be a set of small textual posts on a page. All the text is inside of an array, and you loop through the array to add them to the page. JavaScript also adds in a really easy way element to the DOM. Then, learn as much as possible about forms and how to use them with JavaScript. This is for sure useful. Then, you know pretty well how to manipulate the DOM. Now you need some data to put on it.
The time needed: 1 week
Requests to get data
The data that you put on a site could change over time. Sometimes they are created via an API request. So, you need to know how to handle HTTP requests, you need to know all the most important methods and codes. This is the step that requires less code but is very important. Projects without API requests are rare, and often don’t work well. So, make sure to learn the better way possible everything about HTTP
The time needed: 2 days
Medium and advanced JavaScript concepts
Let’s return to code. This is probably the most challenging part of the journey. Once done that, there is nothing you can’t do. In this part, you need to know concepts that are a bit difficult, but necessary to code big codebases.
Here are some of them: closures, “this” keyword, “let”, “const”, arrow functions, and sockets. Once you master that, you can move on to Objects, and OOP. It is also suggested to try code in TypeScript, to make this part more sensed. Moving on, asynchronous programming, functional programming, and data structures.
This seems overwhelming, and sometimes it could also be. But remember this step is necessary to go on with the rest of the journey. Once done, the rest will seem easy. If you decide to skip some of this, in the future you won’t understand concepts based on some of these topics, and you will need to come back to learn, and it will be more difficult. So, make some effort now, once forever.
The time needed: 2 to 4 weeks
Start using simple libraries and framework
JavaScript has a lot of libraries and frameworks that are powerful and useful to build a lot of different things.
If you are interested, here you can find the best and most famous one:
Before using the most advanced one, start with basics, to understand how to move. The best choices could be Chart.js, to generate all the charts that you want to visualize data, Moment.js, to work with dates and time in general, or JsPDF, to create PDFs.
The time needed: 1 week
Advanced UI frameworks
Now you can start to implement more powerful frameworks and libraries. To become professional, you need sure to master a UI framework, like React, Angular, or Vue.js.
If you are interested in the differences between React and Angular, check out this article:
https://javascript.plainenglish.io/react-vs-angular-clash-of-the-frontend-giants-89289038e5e2
You need these frameworks to create proper and working interfaces, manipulate the DOM in the best way possible, making all the best functionalities that your site needs. You can’t learn all this framework. You have to pick one and master it. I suggest you React but make your research to understand which fits you the most.
The time needed: 1 month
Node.js
Moving on, you should know that JavaScript can also run on your machine, instead of the browser. That is because of the Node.js runtime, based on the Chrome V8 engine. I suggest you do some theoretical research before starting to code. You now need to learn to use Node.js, install it, and develop on it. A very important topic is npm (node package manager ) which is used to install dependencies, and also create your own. Develop something with Node.js, and try to use some libraries of npm, to be sure to know how to use it. I suggest you use Express, a package used to create API and develop the backend of an application using JavaScript. After that, you are a step closer to Fullstack JavaScript. You have done a lot of things so far
The time needed: 3 to 5 weeks
MongoDB
Other things are data, that are stored in databases, the last step of full-stack JavaScript. MongoDB is the one that better fits into JavaScript, for its libraries support and flexibility. It is a performant and modern NoSQL database, that you can use on your local machine, or host online, on the Atlas site. Mastered that, you are almost done.
The time needed: 2 weeks
Mobile
Last, you need to try to work on mobile development. The best way is using React Native, a library to build cross-platform mobile applications with JavaScript. If you decided to learn to React in the previous steps, this last part will be pretty easy for you. Implement some interfaces, and make mobile apps. After that, your journey is complete.
The time needed: 4 weeks
Notes
To better succeed in this journey, at every step you have to create some project, to be sure that you got the point of what you are learning, and you have also something to show and see, that motivates you to keep pushing.
Conclusion
You are now done with your journey. You can find a job as a JavaScript developer, and make over 100k /year. It is amazing, isn’t it? You have done a great job, and all the effort has been worth it.
So, this is overall the best journey to take to become a paid JavaScript developer in 2022. Remember, all the steps can variate, based on your previous experiences with other languages and paradigms. So, make your best, and learn everything you need to succeed. Good luck, enjoy the journey
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If you are interested in other JavaScript-related articles:
Java VS JavaScript:
https://javascript.plainenglish.io/java-vs-javascript-are-they-the-same-88bbacd03386
Brendan Eich:
https://javascript.plainenglish.io/brendan-eich-the-father-of-javascript-f5baaae43a60
Fullstack Javascript:
Python VS Javascript:
https://javascript.plainenglish.io/python-vs-javascript-e8590d346c3b