
Ask HN: Rough estimate on how long it can take to pick up a web stack? - throwawaywebdev
Context: I&#x27;m a professional software developer (more than 5 years of professional experience) working mostly on low-level C&#x2F;C++ developing cross-platform (OSX, Linux and Windows) desktop applications.
I&#x27;m currently based in London and I don&#x27;t feel very enthusiastic about the job market for C++ developers for several reasons[1] and am thinking about changing my &quot;development environment&quot;. For someone that stopped learning about web frameworks&#x2F;libraries a long time ago (~8 years) would it be too hard to pick up the enormous amount of web frameworks, DBs and libraries I keep hearing&#x2F;reading for back-end development ?<p>Is 3 to 6 months (full-time) a reasonable amount of time to master some of the current recommended&#x2F;best web frameworks ?<p>[1]- I can list them if folks show some interest.
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mtmail
[https://generalassemb.ly/education/web-development-
immersive](https://generalassemb.ly/education/web-development-immersive)
teaches novices in three months so you should be fine in that timeframe.

Here's a nice guide on modern Javascript. [https://medium.com/javascript-and-
opinions/state-of-the-art-...](https://medium.com/javascript-and-
opinions/state-of-the-art-javascript-in-2016-ab67fc68eb0b)

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bikamonki
I did the same some years ago, moved from client-server intranet systems to
web development, the reasons probably the same: market demand. It took me a
year to land and master a web stack, but I tried many. In the end I am mostly
using node.js in the back-end and backbone in the front-end. If you don't fool
around like I did and choose a stack up-front I would say 3 months is enough
to be able to do production level apps.

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eip
Are you good at math and algorithms? If so you would probably be much better
off getting into finance. There are probably lots of high paying jobs in
London if you are skilled.

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throwawaywebdev
That's absolutely true even excluding the small HFT shops that pay loads of
money (> £100k/year). I'd prefer to stay away from them because I want to
spend my energy trying to make the world a better place. =) The finance
industry scares me a bit mainly because I consider it to be a high risk job
having loads of legacy software and changing that sort of code is scary for
many reasons including the amount of undefined/implementation defined
behaviours present in languages like C and C++.

