
Ask HN: How does a 1990s web developer get back on track? - neLrivVK
During the late nineties I was making various interactive&#x2F;dynamic websites using the then standard technologies: HTML, PHP, Perl, Mysql, and a tiny bit of CSS. This was the time when Javascript was really only used for form field validation and to spawn popups (Ajax was not yet around), when all layout was done using borderless table&#x2F;tr&#x2F;td HTML elements, when there were no mobile devices and all you had to care about was one or two screen resolutions and basically two browsers: Netscape and MSIE. Since then I have been pursuing my IT career in a different area. But sometimes I still find myself wanting to setup a website every now and then. But in the little free time I have available, I stumble upon all kinds of web technologies and frameworks: JQuery, Node.js, Ruby on rails, AngularJS, Backbone.JS, Django, Bootstrap, to name a few. Ofcourse all have their purpose, weaknesses and strengths. But after work and family, there isn&#x27;t much time left for exploring and trying new things. Maybe other people have already made this journey and can share their experiences? What would be the best way for a nineties web developer to update his knowledge and skills?
======
brudgers
My take is that a greater percentage of websites can be written in HTML and
CSS than currently are: both in the sense of websites that could be entirely
written in HTML and CSS and as portions of websites that can be written in
HTML and CSS instead of with something else.

Many of current batch of tools were developed to meet the needs of engineering
teams at scale: e.g. Angular @ Google and React @ Facebook. Their heritage is
not "hobbyist programmer" friendly. They are great if the hobby is reading
about technology. But many many of those opinions embedded in Django and Rails
only become natural once a person is deeply familiar with the culture of their
communities.

My advice, do the simplest thing that will work and make something. Pick tools
that require a lower level of commitment to an overall architecture as the
need arises. Stay out of silos and rabbit holes.

Good luck.

~~~
davewasthere
Completely this.

If I teleported here from the 90s, first thing I'd need to wrap my head around
is how HTML and CSS have changed. I'd be learning a responsive framework (or
even hand-rolling it, so you _know_ how it works) like bootstrap. And doing a
very basic website.

And if html5 & responsive css aren't enough to wrap your head around at once,
I'd create a github account, and start with github pages. That'll let you use
the static site generator Jekyll. The combination of all three will do pretty
much all you need for 90% of the sites out there.

After that, then I'd look at a stack that lets you have some degree of
interactivity and persistence in order to build web apps.... But for now,
clean responsive websites would be the way forward.

~~~
robeastham
Take a look at Susy for layout, bit more flexible than Bootstrap:

[https://github.com/oddbird/susy](https://github.com/oddbird/susy)

Also for static site generators take a look at:

[https://middlemanapp.com/](https://middlemanapp.com/) (Ruby)
[http://gohugo.io/](http://gohugo.io/) (Go)
[https://github.com/getpelican/pelican](https://github.com/getpelican/pelican)
(Python)

When you need to go beyond static sites and take a look at the web frameworks
- Ruby on Rails is the obvious one, but I reckon that Meteor
([https://www.meteor.com/](https://www.meteor.com/)) could be a good bet now
that it has matured. Might save you a lot of time when compared to RoR for
certain tasks.

~~~
dandanisaur
Imo I'd hold off on susy. Bootstrap is a great start for a beginner abs it's
used in a ton of environments.

~~~
excalq
I took several years away from the front-end to focus on Backend and DevOps,
only recently re-upping my front-end-fu. Since I knew CSS 2.0, I found
Bootstrap quite easy to pick up and be productive with in about a day, not
previously knowing CSS griding. And I found myself saying over again, holy
shit where was this back in "my day"!

------
blhack
Here's a semi-controversial opinion: you probably don't need to learn much.

You don't need hipster.js to build a website. You can still build websites
that can be used by millions of people using PHP, mysql, and HTML.

Lots and lots of people will tell you to learn hipster.js, and will imply that
if you aren't using something written by 3 20 year olds in a coffee shop
during a hackathon, that you can't get The Scale.

But the reality is that people have been getting The Scale with the tools that
you already know since you learned them.

Here is a relevant blog post:
[http://thingist.com/t/item/21434/](http://thingist.com/t/item/21434/)

~~~
habitue
This isn't a very controversial opinion on HN. It's the standard "js
developers are just crazy ADHD kids and all they do is chase the latest shiny
framework every week". It gets featured prominently in every thread that
mentions webdev.

It's also wrong. There is a spectrum from early adopter to head-buried-in-the-
sand cobol developer, and most people would agree there are trade-offs to
being on either end.

Suggesting to someone who has been out of the game for 15 years that basically
nothing has changed is doing him a disservice and not answering the question.
He's asking about what he's missing, it's better to let him in on it and let
him decide for himself if it's really just the same old shit repackaged.

~~~
dev360
On that note, I'd throw in SPA's and REST. Thats a big conceptual difference
in how apps are built nowadays and worth to get up to speed with.

------
SignMeTheHELLUp
Wow, there is a lot of awful advice in this thread.

HTML, Javascript and CSS are still extremely important and they have come a
long way since 1990. Forget everything you knew about them and research their
state in 2016. You have a lot to learn, but you'll find all three more
powerful and expressive today than they were in 1990.

There is currently a big shift in the way clients want their websites to work.
In the past (and present) clients were happy with simple HTML pages that were
generated on the server and sent down to the client for every action the user
performs. Now and in the future, we're shifting towards "Single page apps"
which are Javascript centric applications that store page templates client-
side and talk to the back end through APIs. Page transitions are emulated with
Javascript routing libraries. This means the frontends are more complex but
can provide a richer, more interactive experience. To see the cutting edge of
this technique search for React + Redux.

Backend development is still important. People generally converge under a
simple set of rules for backend development called Model-View-Controller. This
is a design pattern that dictates how requests are delegated into your
business layer. Investigate MVC as well as Domain Driven Design to get
yourself up to speed.

Understand that there is an enormous amount of garbage out there right now.
Some things to be extremely wary of are NoSQL databases (they have very
limited use cases but are marketed as a silver bullet) and NodeJs (a backend
server which executes Javascript but has more than a few shortcomings). Be
extremely skeptical of any advice you receive over the internet. There are too
many people dispensing advice with no actual credibility because of the ease
of access to the Internet.

The best thing to do is to work with some talented developers and build your
own network from them. A lot of developers on the leading edge use Twitter and
often drop useful bits of advice to keep you on the right track.

~~~
gaius
But users hate them. Users want their browser's back button to work in a
sensible way.

~~~
aminorex
So true. But people who pay web designers like them.

------
pfarnsworth
Asking here probably isn't the best thing, because most people here are at the
forefront of the latest and greatest, so you will probably get a ton of
suggestions and reasons why. Throw mine on top of the pile as well.

You need to first define what your goal is. Do you want to become a full-time
front-end developer? Do you want to be a full-stack, etc. Different aspects
will require a different subset.

First and foremost, you will need to figure out how to get more free-time so
that you can master a whole slew of technologies that have come and gone in
the last 20 years. This is a cold, hard fact. You have a lot of ground to make
up for, and if you can't even start up a web site, it's going to be tough
getting legitimacy as a modern front-end developer.

I would start off with the fundamentals, ie. HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
Knowing how to build things from scratch, using AJAX, etc, from pure
Javascript without frameworks will help you understand why some frameworks are
better than others. Then you can migrate to JQuery and Bootstrap. Once you
have mastered these, you can then go on to whatever current framework best
suits you, but you'll be able to understand the current challenges best.

~~~
petke
Thats interesting. Are most people on HN web developers? It makes sense I
guess. Im an old C++ programmer and I get the vague feeling that I'm in a
minority here. Has there been any polls on HN demographics? Who are you guys?

~~~
ionised
I'm a desktop applications dev working for an engineering consultancy. I
mostly develop and maintain our GIS and simulation applications.

We use a combination of C++ and Java with an Oracle PL/SQL back end.

We plan to deliver some of our applications through web applications/services
over the next few years. I've touched on Javascript a bit but as of this
moment, I have very very limited exposure to web development of any kind.

I've only been programming for just over three years though, so I'm still kind
of in my junior stage.

~~~
stuxnet79
Do you sometimes feel left out or that you may be limiting your future career
prospects? I am a Java application developer with also limited exposure to web
development and it is difficult to not feel disconcerted with all the
JavaScript talk.

I've started tinkering around with NodeJS but I'd hate for it to get lambasted
just as soon as I've mastered it. The frameworks and tools in web development
feel transient to me, and I'd hate to build my career on a foundation made of
sand.

~~~
ionised
> Do you sometimes feel left out or that you may be limiting your future
> career prospects?

Sorry for the late reply.

I definitely feel like the longer I remain with my current employer the more
I'll stagnate and the less employable I'll be over time.

We have plans here to start offering some of our applications through web
services/web applications but realistically we won't even hit the
implementation stage for another three or four years. SO as of now, most of
the developers here basically only have raw desktop development experience.

This is the reason I am currently looking for a new job. I have a couple of
interviews lined (also turned a few interviews down due to distance from my
home) up and the main concern with most of the telephone interviewers has been
my lack of exposure to web technologies. Most are understanding enough though
to see that an 'easing in' period would be required for me to start working
with Javascript and RESTful services etc. It may also help that I haven't been
programming professionally for very long.

I should say though that these positions I have interviewed/am interviewing
for are back-end Java/C++ positions with companies that offer their products
and services through web and mobile applications and not purely web developer
posititions, so I would still be working mostly with either Java or C++
technologies and frameworks, just with an eye towards web and mobile delivery.

I don't particularly want to be purely a 'web developer' anyway, but i do want
to learn more about web technologies, and I want to learn it as soon as
possible.

As it stands now I am considering learning (in my own time) more about
Javascript and associated frameworks so I can understand more about web
development in general. I have the same concerns as you though, things seem to
move so quickly in that arena, frameworks seem to fall in and out of fashion
in the course of months or even weeks and I am having trouble knowing where to
start.

It also doesn't help that I'm trying to (slowly) learn to the Android 6 SDK at
home with an intention to try to pick up the Rust language as well. I'm
clearly trying to take too much on.

~~~
stuxnet79
No worries, thanks for responding. I'm in a pretty similar position to you
although I haven't yet reached the 3 year mark, more like 2. I also tend to
have ADHD with my hobby projects that I do on the side. There's this open
source project based on Rust that I want to contribute to on my spare time
(I've already looked at Android and made an app, but for some reason I'm not
compelled to pursue mobile development professionally) and of course I've
already told you about NodeJS.

Easier said than done, but I'd advise to just stick with the web dev right now
and focus on the other stuff later (if ever). Web apps are increasingly
standing in for native mobile apps (that's partly why I gave up on Android)
and Rust hasn't really reached a level where it's lucrative for professionals.
Just be pragmatic and catch up on your web stuff right now (like I am right
now) and once you think you've covered your bases then you can focus on the
"for fun" stuff (Rust - although it would be awesome if someone could prove me
wrong).

~~~
ionised
I can see what you mean with regards to mobile development. Android is not
exactly 'fun' to work with so far.

So much XML, it feels like you need to write two or three times as much code
to implement any functionality than you do on any other language/platform. It
feels so heavyweight.

I think you're right though, I might delay picking up Rust for a while and
learn some web tech. It was just going to be something fun to do in my spare
time.

------
joeyspn
> _But in the little free time I have available_

> _But after work and family, there isn 't much time left _

If you want to ship ASAP with little time investment, IMO nothing beats
Meteor. Skills required: HTML, CSS, JS.

I've built projects with PHP, Rails, Django, Node, Angular, etc ... and Meteor
is the framework I recommend to newcomers. Ok, you're not exactly a newcomer,
but clearly you've been disconnected many years and you don't have enough free
time to learn new tools/languages. You'll need a lot of abstractions
(features, deployment, db interfacing, best practices, etc)...

Meteor will help you with this, a lot... And the most important thing: it's a
lot of fun!

[https://www.meteor.com/](https://www.meteor.com/)

0,02

~~~
vskarine
+1 for meteor highly recommend to start with
[https://www.discovermeteor.com/](https://www.discovermeteor.com/)

~~~
sergiotapia
No, discover Meteor is extremely outdated.

~~~
sgdesign
I wouldn't say it's "extremely" outdated. The info inside is still valid, you
can start with it and then complete your knowledge with the Meteor Guide.

------
rutigs
It's pretty easy to break it down to the common parts but there definitely is
quite a bit to learn.

NodeJS or Python or Ruby

These are your fairly standard backend choices. They all have minimalist and
full featured frameworks for building applications including but not limited
to Express, Koa, Ruby On Rails, Sinatra, Django, Flask. Go is also fairly easy
to get going quickly in. There is not really a wrong choice here for a
personal project.

In the case that you want a single page application that works with the
backend you made with the previous choices:

Backbone or Angular or React+Redux(any flux implementation will do)

These are for consuming your backend and any of them will do. Learning Angular
is its own thing despite it being javascript. React+Redux seems a little odd
by embedding html in your javascript but once you get the hang of it it's
pretty neat. Don't know much about Backbone but I've heard its fairly easy to
use.

Bootstrap is pretty easy to learn and use to make your website responsive with
minimal effort.

Heroku is by far the easiest platform for deployment and horizontal scaling
however it can get pricey quickly. AWS has a similar solution with Elastic
Beanstalk but I've got no experience to share with that. If you want all the
control (but more work) you can go with Digital Ocean for a 5$ VPS. Unlike
Heroku you will have do all admin work like installing necessary packages,
databases, and configuring a web-server but you can control every little bit
of your application without having to spend more than $5 a month.

------
matdrewin
As a former Java/Spring developer from the mid-2000s trying to get back into
the fold, I think Ruby on Rails is the best bet. It is not the latest and
greatest and its a tad slow performance wise but what it lacks in speed it
makes up in clarity. Especially on the documentation/tutorial front which
makes for a quicker learning experience. I find the most interesting part of
RoR is its "curated" (almost Microsoft like) environment where choices are
mostly made for you instead of banging your head against the wall making
choices about all the different libraries and tools you should use.

~~~
piratebroadcast
+1 to this

~~~
josinalvo
(can we post meta things?)

Given that I don't know the score of the answers, such "+1" answers are useful
to me. Thanks!

------
sharemywin
Instead of trying to do it all at once you might want to take it in chunks.

I would start on the front end and

I would start with looking into Bootstrap and jquery. And look at using PHP to
deliver the webservice data to jquery.
[http://tutorialzine.com/2015/01/shoutbox-php-
jquery/](http://tutorialzine.com/2015/01/shoutbox-php-jquery/)

\------

I would also google some MVC PHP tutorals to get some idea of how MVC works
since alot of modern frameworks are modeled after it.

\----

next pick a javascript framework to make a SPA here's some tutorials(middle of
the page) on using angularjs with php:
[http://www.angularcode.com/](http://www.angularcode.com/)

\-----------

now your ready to swap out php for another server technology. nodejs, RoR,
whatever.

\---------------------

~~~
jakejake
+1 for just starting with bootstrap - which will introduce you to a little
jQuery. That'll be a good foundation and will allow you to have some fun
without being overwhelmed.

Once you have that in your pocket you'll be ready to try any of the new js
frameworks that are being mentioned here.

------
RikNieu
I'll chip in as a recent animator-turned-web-developer:

1\. Learn plain old JavaScript([https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/JavaScript](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/JavaScript)), paying particular attention to both ES5 _and_ ES6.
Most of the latest frameworks work with JS as its base, so if you know JS
you'll likely find it easier to figure them out.

2\. Learn CSS(it's easy, shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours) and
then dive into SASS or LESS.

3\. Take some time to learn how Node and it's package manager npm work.

4\. For the more back-endish choices, I'd have a look at getting a basic
understanding of NodeJS, RoR and Django. One of these should appeal to you
more than the others and I'd just pick one and stick to it.

~~~
juliankrispel
`Learn CSS(it's easy, shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours)`

That's kind of hilarious.

------
vortico
Keep doing what you're doing with the frontend. (Although you're free to use
modern backends.) The web today is a horrible mess of slow garbage expanding
around the content that matters. Forms should POST directly to a URL when
submitted, all content should be generated by the backend and served upon a
GET request. Javascript should be used for form validation, interactive
elements like OpenStreetMaps, but nothing else. Modern CSS is great, but
designers abuse heavy features when they lose track of the purpose of a
website: to serve content to your eyes and to allow the user to navigate with
hyperlinks.

~~~
SignMeTheHELLUp
"Javascript should be used for form validation, interactive elements like
OpenStreetMaps, but nothing else"

Not if you want to get hired. We've moved on from that simple model. I don't
like it either but ignoring the fact that things are changing is a good way to
end up unemployed.

~~~
vortico
That's true I suppose, since I develop primarily for fun. But promoting this
minimal/ideal state of web development can only improve the experience of
users. The excitement of using bloated web frameworks might help your startup,
but when it seeps into well-designed free software made by the consumer for
the consumer, it hurts the product.

------
subpixel
Two paths you might consider:

1) Focus on HTML/CSS and use a static site solution (github pages + jekyll is
hard to beat). When you need more, learn the JS necessary to make it happen,
and perhaps move beyond static and into more JS-front-end territory as needed.

2) Tap into your PHP memories and take a look at Laravel and specifically
laracasts.com. I'm not proselytizing (I actually don't use php or Laravel),
but it's a really solid framework with a vibrant and heterogenous community.
It may not where the cool kids are, but it's a great way to be productive and
it seems to be constantly improving.

Good luck!

------
codingdave
First, don't worry about new frameworks or languages right away. You can stick
with PHP/mySQL on the back end to start.

Learn all the updates to CSS first, to understand how pages are structured
without tables. That will help you to move on to jQuery, which will in turn
help you understand how JavaScript is used nowadays to work with the page.
Once you are that far, you can pursue node.js to get up to speed on server-
side JS.

After that, you should be as caught up as you need to be, and will better be
able to evaluate all the other frameworks and languages out there, and set
your own direction.

------
diezge
Get up an hour earlier than you do each day. It's hard when you start, but if
you don't have much spare time then it is the best way to keep up with the
industry.

Spend this time updating your knowledge base via. tech news, tutorial/e-course
sites such as Udemy/Pluralsight (if you learn best by video-and-code) or
official textual documentation/guides otherwise.

Learn about version control (Git), HTML5/CSS3, ECMAscript 6... PHP and MySQL
are still fine. Read guides about modern practices such as mobile-first
development, testing via. Chrome developer tools, file
minification/concatenation etc. Just learn a little each morning and don't
feel overwhelmed!

Consider the points of the following link and don't worry about the "flavour
of the week" libraries so much and you'll be fine ->
[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46760/74224](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46760/74224)

------
fallous
Find a problem that is not easily solved by your current knowledge/experience
and explore it. Having a clear goal does wonders to provide focus and limit
the chances of being overwhelmed by "all the things."

When you address the problem, don't immediately jump to the newest
framework/stack that claims to solve it but instead try and use the majority
of your existing skills and knowledge with one or two modifications... even if
they are "out of date." Going through the effort of adapting existing skills
allows you to better understand the underlying problems as well as re-live (in
blessedly compressed time) the iterations that occurred to arrive at the
current accepted solutions. There's a lot of wisdom to be found in taking that
journey.

Learning the "why" of things is far more important than just acquiring the
operational skills for a given technology.

------
wonkaWonka
CSS3 & jQuery. That's it.

HTML, PHP & Mysql are all still quite very relevant.

Replace: [table/tr/td] with [div/ul/li] and substitute the borderless tables
with the CSS3 box model and you're _TOTALLY_ up-to-date. No lie.

Right-click > Inspect Element > Console > console.log will get you a long way.
Treat the JS console as your new client-side command line. Just start typing
in function names, and see what autocompletes. Treat JavaScript functions as
if they were executable binaries within a shell window. Use jQuery to traverse
the DOM with CSS selectors. This behavior is well-supported in pretty much
every current, modern desktop browser.

Everything else is quite honestly a fad, and replete with over-engineering
pissing contests. I'd add more opinionated snark to this last part, but that
would dilute the important parts of this comment, which I do hope reach you
well.

~~~
evanmoran
I'd like to highlight that Wonka has it right (CSS3 & jQuery) and also add
that NodeJS is pretty important right now for server-side.

The reasoning here is that the heart of the web is, and has always been, HTML,
CSS, JS.

jQuery is a natural choice because it's replaced direct DOM manipulation quite
elegantly and is used by 80% of websites. The only thing you're missing is
server-side, and Node makes this an easy choice by also being JavaScript.

In short, it's all about JavaScript. If you can code, you'll do well. Keep
practicing functions and with Node you can practice command-line apps, or
server-side apps as well. Good luck!

------
nroose
Check out meteorjs. Javascript has a huge amount of buzz and usage these days,
and meteorjs is a fairly simple fully integrated environment that allows you
to do just about anything. I don't use it - I have been developing software
since the early 90s and I am currently working in RoR. But when I want to play
around, it's in meteorjs. In my opinion, too many teams are using an
environment that is too complex, ensuring that nothing is predictable.

~~~
rafaquintanilha
Although I do like Meteor, I don't think it's the right choice for the OP.
Surely Meteor is easy to grasp, but its fundamentals rely on many technologies
(React/Blaze, MongoDB, NodeJS) that a out-of-practice developer may struggle a
little.

That being said, I'd recommend the OP to dive into modern CSS frameworks
(Bootstrap, Semantic UI, Materialize, to name a few) and learn more
JavaScript. After that he will probably feel what he likes/dislikes more and
find the most suitable framework for his needs.

------
mei0Iesh
I don't know what any of those things you named are. I ignore all that stuff.
The only thing from the '90s that doesn't work anymore is Flash, because I
guess Apple blocked it during the mobile revolution and it killed its dominant
position.

Otherwise, everything applicable from back then still is today. Any time
anyone mentions PHP on forums like this, there's always fashion-conscious
people who jump in to attack it. But I'm still building brand new websites
based on it, and people still express their gratitude, never once saying
there's any problem because the site uses PHP.

MySQL is still going strong, and there's some alternatives that are
compatible, like Percona and Maria.

JavaScript is the same. There's all these frameworks like there are for PHP,
but I ignore all that. I never understood why I'd be better off using someone
else's virtual language on top of a language. I just use bare JavaScript, and
it works the same to me as it did back then. Still have to worry about
differences between browsers, but instead of Netscape and IE, it's stuff like
Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. A framework can make that easier, but it can make
others things more difficult, and it's better to keep dependence on JS minimal
anyways.

What I'm getting at is, I don't know why you need to update anything. If
you're trying to get a specific job, then you need to use what they do. But
for just building things in your free time that work on modern web browsers,
you already know what you need to know. You could probably even run the same
exact version of server and authoring tools you did before, and it should
display fine in the latest web browsers.

It's different if you want to build something like a mobile app, or Windows
software, because those platforms changed significantly since the '90s.
There's languages now that didn't exist then, and new tools you've never seen
before.

But on the web, any text editor, HTML, and any language you want for the
backend is fine. Just like I still write .sh scripts, and they get the job
done.

It's more important to spend that time on family, and your career. Since the
stuff you already know still works, there's not much need to use anything
else. Unless you're worried about what the kids think, and how they'll judge
you.

~~~
SignMeTheHELLUp
"JavaScript is the same"

"What I'm getting at is, I don't know why you need to update anything"

Shocking advice. There is a huge amount to learn. Any developer coming from
the 1990s needs to re-learn all their technologies or they are going to have a
very stressful time delivering anything appealing to users expectations in
2016.

"Since the stuff you already know still works, there's not much need to use
anything else"

This kind of mentality leads to becoming deadwood and unemployment. Developers
must keep learning especially with the rate of change of technology over the
past 5 or so years.

~~~
mei0Iesh
I don't think most people creating websites today have an accurate assessment
of "user expectations". Often I'll visit a site that has a gigantic video
playing, with some obscure symbols, that doesn't even work on all my devices.
Or if I have JS turned off, a blank page.

I'm building things the same way as I did at around 2000, and my creations are
just as relevant today. Most of the fancy JS stuff we could do in the '90s.
The new stuff is not about basic websites, but how some new additions of HTML5
work. Most websites do not need those though, and if they do, then you learn
those specific things.

------
sdegutis
You've answered your own question: there's no _need_ , you have no _problem to
solve_ by writing an app. Usually the problem itself dictates half the
technology choices for you, and the rest are filled in by using what you
already know. In your case though, you have no _reason_ to write an app. So
the only answer that makes sense is "none".

------
Diti
You could start slowly teaching yourself more about new technologies, but try
and become even more an expert on the stuff you already know.

Perl and MySQL are strong choices and there must be a lot of big companies out
there who still use them because it works for them. Startups always want the
cutting-edge technology (NoSQL), but sometimes a good old RDBMS like MySQL is
the way to go.

Inspired by:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10084449](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10084449)

------
Isofarro
Since you've done PHP and MySQL previously, if you still remember how to use
that, it's worth starting with a simple PHP micro framework (like Slim, or
maybe Symfony 3). That will teach you about using URLs for routing. (If
starting from scratch, pick a language, and pick a micro framework for it:
Ruby => Sinatra, Python => Flask)

Get comfortable with that, and then create a route that sends back information
in JSON instead of HTML. That will then give you something to try Ajax
against.

Also, learn CSS. The Web switched to CSS for layout in 2001-2004. Have a read
through 24ways.org -- their advent calendar for each year, it's nice bit size
bits about modern web development. CSS for layout. Responsive design
(basically adapting to various browser window sizes and screen resolutions).
If you want to learn how to lay out a page in CSS this is essential, but if
you want to get up to speed just building stuff, then taking something like
Twitter's Bootstrap is a handy starting point.

Also, jQuery. Learn about using events properly, and keeping JavaScript in a
separate file and hooking into the browser/document events you are interested
in. jQuery is the starting point for getting your head around Unobtrusive
JavaScript.

If you are interested in getting your head around static HTML/CSS sites first,
it might be worth pulling up a Jekyll tutorial and following that. (Jekyll is
a static site generator. Markdown documents rendered as static HTML using the
Liquid tempting language)

------
oliwarner
"Frameworks" are definitely the word to describe what has changed since you
left us and you've certainly mentioned a few, but the way websites are pieced
together is _largely_ the same. A bit of dynamic code sharts out some HTML and
that gets rendered with some CSS (and occasionally some JS).

I'd leave the backend stuff well alone to start if I were you. If the last
browsers you were testing against were really Netscape and IE4, I'd strongly
suggest you start with the design side of things. Bootstrap is a great
framework for writing little CSS and reaping a many-device-compatible site.
There are alternatives like Materialize.

So build a one-page static website and see how that all fits together. Change
the design. Consider digging into the CSS (or LESS/SASS CSS-generator
languages). You can do a lot with static sites. There are even form-handling
third parties to take out the hard stuff.

Once you're on top of that, you're in a good spot to go dynamic; learn
database modelling, templating, URL dispatchers and all the jazz that is
specific to the backend framework of your choice.

Don't feel pressurised to stay with PHP. You haven't used it in years and I'd
argue it's everybody's favourite punch-bag for a reason. The quality of
tutorials is much better these days so picking up something like Django or
Rails without prior Python or Ruby experience is easy. But don't try to master
them all at once.

The best way to learn is to dig in and build.

------
j45
It looks like you have a good background on things. As a polyglot with
experience in plenty of languages, I'd minimize the number of syntaxes to pick
up. I would focus on leveraging your javascript background as a starting
point.

Let me tell you why.

Not much has changed since the 90's in one area: there are as many opinions
and interpretations running around as facts. There's no shortage of time being
spent re-inventing the wheel over and over in frameworks that really don't
look much different. The end result is most languages have pretty decent
frameworks to work with.

A better question is what would be a best path forward for you to dip your
feet in and move forward?

The web and mobile landscape is a lot nicer now with the tools that aim to
help you get things done quicker, as long as you don't go off their beaten
path.

Which two swiss army knife tools could you use to roll out into one thing?

The first big shift is to think mobile first, including mobile web based apps
that also work on desktop.

I've jumped into Javascript more so in the past year as node.js has continued
to mature. I use my strategically limited time to build value and not spend my
time learning like I had to in my 20's.

The frameworks I'm playing with at the moment that provided a good coverage
for web applications as well as doing mobile web app dev, as well as mobile
app development.

Sails.js (forked to trails.js now) will be familiar to you. This will cover
writing web apps and not having to build your own entire stack. Has worked
wonderfully for the few projects I've used it for.

To cover mobile development, I recommend looking at ionic framework to start
out with. It can connect just fine to a backend like parse.com.

There are no shortage of business and information driven apps (that pay well)
that this technology can create with one code base for all end points. There
is a great case to build native apps once something like this solves a
problem.

If you want to get into mobile development from a higher level to explore, I
really recommend a tool like appery.io. It was dicey before in places but now
has ionic built in, it's a fantastic prototyping tool for JS apps.

Beyond this, I've always had a crush on Python and want to spend more time
with it, but for now Javascript keeps me moving along.

Feel free to reach out if you wanna chat, you sound like you have a lot of
experience already.

------
golergka
Same here. I used to make websites around late nineties and early 00s (I was
about 12-14 at the time, but was doing a surprisingly good job), but find
myself a little bit lost now. So, while I'm certainly not a professional web
developer now, here's what I found useful in my small hobby projects.

First of all, I'm not trying to best solution — I'm pretty satisfied if my
solution is just good enough. So, instead of top-notch technical quality, I
aim for easy to learn tech, because I don't have a lot of time. So, I ended up
using Angular in a couple of places for the client-only web apps, and using
server-rendered templates backed up by Django on others. Both are mature
frameworks, and both have a lot of very valid criticisms addressed at them —
by professional developers that create huge projects at scale. Which I'm not,
so I don't really care. And in terms of working with HTML, I always end up
using Twitter bootstrap, which offers a reasonable amount of template elements
that don't look ugly.

I also tried to use different project management/automation tools like npm,
grunt, bower and else — because in my main line of work I can't live without
em. However, I ended up that I have to spend too much time learning them
compared with how much of my time do they save. So, now, instead of proper
package management, I just copy minified sources and write a couple of
makefiles and bash scripts to automate stuff instead of using JS and Web-
specific tools and their special formats.

All of this was really hard for me, because I always feel an itch when I do
not automate something that should be automated, copy code or in general,
don't dig enough to find the best practice possible. But in this particular
case, because I only create sites for small hobby projects, I had to make
myself give a little bit less fucks, and spend this time working on actual
functionality instead.

------
20years
Being that you are already familiar with HTML/CSS and PHP, I suggest getting
updated with those first. Learn responsive design or Bootstrap to get started
on the front-end (HTML). Do some reading on the latest CSS best practices and
go through a couple of JavaScript and jQuery tutorials. For PHP, I suggest
reading through
[http://www.phptherightway.com/](http://www.phptherightway.com/) because a lot
has changed with PHP over the last few years.

All of this will give you what you need to built out a robust site. After you
are updated and comfortable with these, you may then decide to move onto
learning other things such as React, Node, etc.

------
danpalmer
Prefacing this with "I'm in my 20s and don't know what development was really
like in the 90s", but I want to suggest an alternative approach...

It _looks_ like the thing that has changed most is not the languages and
frameworks (you can still use PHP, MySQL, effectively), but actually the
deployment.

Automated deployment, continuous integration and delivery, and cloud services
like AWS seem to be the bit that has changed the most.

If I'm wrong, ignore me, but otherwise, I'd have a play around with something
like Ansible, use a few AWS services, some of the more value-add ones (i.e.
not EC2 or S3) to see what you can now get "off the shelf".

------
nalck
I was taught table layout in school and had to relearn everything. First place
I'd start today is [http://diveintohtml5.info/](http://diveintohtml5.info/).
After that look into CSS3, [http://myth.io](http://myth.io) helps you make
sure your styles are cross-browser. Lots of comments talk about static
generators and web frameworks already. Use the JavaScript pixie dust sparingly
and you'll be fine.

------
dredmorbius
HTML5. Read Mark Pilgrim's _Dive Into HTML5_. And by read, I mean, both the
material, _and_ view-source and his stylesheets. The site itself is a tour de
force of what he describes.

CSS2 and CSS3. The latter is where CSS headed, though it's still in
development.

You can do a hell of a lot of sensible page design with just straight HTML5
and some modest amounts of CSS.

Javascript for any automation.

CodePen is a great place to play with (and explore for) ideas. StackExchange
and Reddit's /r/WebDev and other subs for Q&A with other developers.

Maciej Cegłowski's rants on current Web faults / advertising / privacy
[http://idlewords.com/](http://idlewords.com/)

There are others who hit this point, and do it well, but Maciej makes a
compelling case on all three points (with essays featured here on Hacker
News). My read is that the Web is headed for a crisis on the point of design,
on many grounds (readability, privacy, annoyances, accessibility), and that,
despite much of what I've written above, read Web design may well die. With
"Reader Mode" features being included in more browsers these days (Safari,
Firefox, Chrome is coming up with it, Opera's had it, not sure about MSIE),
readers can simply opt out of design. Which may be a Good Thing.

Enjoy.

------
nikdaheratik
It depends on what you want to do. If you want to get a pro job then it takes
a lot more time investment then a hobby.

I started out in the same tech stack and have been doing this since late
2000s. TBH, a modern web framework with a js frontend is overkill for a hobby
project. If you want to mess around with just the front end, start with a
hackable static site generator like
[http://spress.yosymfony.com/](http://spress.yosymfony.com/) Hack the
templates and you can get a good starting place for how much has changed on
the front end.

Learning WordPress templating is another good hobby kind of place to start.
Actually, if you get really good with that, you can probably turn it into a
job on its own (though less money than more full stack type work).

If you were wanting a career change, you need to learn just enough of one
backend framework and just enough from a frontend framework to land an entry
job. Then learn everything you can from reading someone else's code. There is
no project that you can do on your own that would teach you the entire stack
as quickly and you'd get paid to learn it.

------
hunvreus
I agree with the opinion of many others in this thread that you'll be able to
recycle a good amount of your skills, but you may want to get familiar with a
couple additional tools;

1\. Start by creating a GitHub [1] account if you can.

2\. Get started with a simple GitHub page. This will get you familiar with the
GitHub interface, some basic Git concepts and will refresh your HTML skills.

3\. Hack around the CSS and templates. Have some fun an break things.

From there you can start exploring more things;

\- Start looking into SASS [2], which is natively supported by Jekyll [3].

\- Set up Jekyll on your local machine [4] (beware, I've always found Ruby to
be a mess to deal with).

\- Add jQuery [5] and start adding some simple effects (scroll to the top,
maybe look into adding simple toggle effects for menu on mobile).

Now, you could go and try to learn more advanced stuff (React, AngularJS and
all that jazz), but with a GitHub account and some knowledge of HTML5, CSS3
and JS/jQuery you'll be able to do a fair amount of damage already. Worry
about the fancy stuff later on once you're comfortable again with building
sites.

PS: don't use tables for your layouts, and don't use Dreamweaver ;). Atom [6]
is a good free alternative editor from GitHub. You can figure out later on
what works better for you (Sublime? Eclipse?) but it will get you started.

Also, Codecademy [7] is your friend.

[1] [https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/)

[2] [http://sass-lang.com/](http://sass-lang.com/)

[3] [http://jekyllrb.com/docs/assets/](http://jekyllrb.com/docs/assets/)

[4] [http://jekyllrb.com/](http://jekyllrb.com/)

[5] [https://jquery.com/](https://jquery.com/)

[6] [https://atom.io/](https://atom.io/)

[7] [https://www.codecademy.com/](https://www.codecademy.com/)

------
pcunite
Well, let me jump in here too. Just relearn HTML, JavaScript, and CSS = HTML5.
I therefore recommend two books:

JavaScript for Web Developers and CSS3 The Missing Manual. Don't overthink
this. From this you can move on to frameworks if you feel you need them.

Now, concerning the backend ... well, lots of choices. C# with ASP MVC, Ruby,
JavaScript with NodeJS, PHP is still very relevant. Pick what you like,
seriously.

------
adamconroy
It depends what you are trying to achieve, but acquiring a cms of some
variety, then hacking on that is not a bad way to learn.

I'm not a web UI programmer, although have been at times over the years and
still do some professional work in that space, but a little while ago I
created a website for a friend's business as a hobby project for me.

I chose to use Drupal, which is a php based cms, and used a paas called
pantheon. [https://pantheon.io/docs/articles/getting-
started/](https://pantheon.io/docs/articles/getting-started/)

The good thing about this approach was that I had a fully functional site to
start with, built with reasonably good practices (progressive enhancement
etc), and I was able to hack away on it and taught myself some php as I needed
to achieve certain things that weren't available out of the box. I found it
quite interesting to dig around and see how they structured the site,
particularly the css strategies.

------
apapli
I'm a sales guy first and foremost, and develop for fun on evenings and
weekends when I have some spare time after my child had gone to bed. 90% for
fun, 10% for a small side income.

For what it is worth I taught myself Ruby on Rails and MySQL, however in
hindsight I probably should have learned php / MySQL as it seems more
prevalent, less "hipster.js" and easier to set up basic dev and prod
environments.

I still don't fully understand Ajax or JavaScript, however they are "nice to
have's" in my book as they improve the UX, but I can still make an application
work without them.

An alternative is to learn how to customise a commercial application. Deluge
for Zoho is pretty easy (and appears to be based on php), and Shopify's Liquid
is good too (that's based on ruby). I found them both easy to learn.

Hope that helps!

------
rorykoehler
Seeing as you know PHP try the Laravel framework (disclaimer: I've never used
it but have heard that it's very rails like and I use rails daily because it's
very fast and easy to get started with). Use bootstrap for your CSS needs
(layout etc is too simple to be true and it will save you a ton of time) and
once you have the bones of functionality you want start exploring JS tools for
adding a slicker user experience.

If you want to look at something new I can highly recommend the Rails Tutorial
by Hartl to bring you up to speed on the basics of web dev with rails,
bootstrap and ajax. It also teaches you a bit of git which is a must.

[https://www.railstutorial.org/book](https://www.railstutorial.org/book)

------
quxbar
Luckily, you can skip right ahead to React+Redux. It's really a logical
extension of your stack than you think. jQuery and Backbone you can pretty
much ignore except know that it's a less elegant and less declarative way to
do models, views, and event binding.

~~~
igravious
I've a good few years web programming experience: Rails, PHP, HTML/CSS/JS
(jQuery), SQL, ... you get the idea. Apart from keeping up to date with Rails
nothing 'modern'.

I've spent the last week (finally!) trying and in the end succeeding to wrap
my head around React+Redux. It took a many many many hours of puzzlement. I
began with the react+slingshot[0] @coryhouse made as a starter kit and going
through the React docs and Redux docs. I guess my desire stemmed from seeing
Dan's demo of Redux's time-travel and hot reloading ability, I was intrigued.
I copied the TODO example from the Redux docs and fashioned it to my liking
exploring all the parts.

I'm here to tell you that it's not easy. The landscape is still in flux (buh-
dum-tish, I'll be here all week folks) and that for every piece of the dev
tool puzzle you've two or three options.

I think you can get away with React+Redux on the client side which replaces
the V in your MVC. {This in practice means the `react', `react-dom', `react-
redux', and `redux' files. _Everything_ else is tooling, but my God so much
tooling}. YMMV.

That's as far as I'd go, otherwise you're throwing out all your server-side
dev experience, and why would you want to do that?

What I'd like to ask folks is: what happens to my nice static HTML/CSS pages
if React+Redux is all JS? Server-side rendering? I'll come back and edit this
and put in a few more links I found handy. Do believe the hype, React+Redux is
pretty neat.

[0] [https://github.com/coryhouse/react-
slingshot](https://github.com/coryhouse/react-slingshot) \---

Edit!

React docs: [https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/getting-
started.html](https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/getting-started.html)

React DevTools: [https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/Complementary-
Tools](https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/Complementary-Tools)

The Video: Dan Abramov - Live React: Hot Reloading with Time Travel at react-
europe 2015
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsSnOQynTHs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsSnOQynTHs)

Redux docs:
[http://rackt.org/redux/docs/basics/index.html](http://rackt.org/redux/docs/basics/index.html)

Redux DevTools: [https://github.com/gaearon/redux-
devtools/](https://github.com/gaearon/redux-devtools/)

------
narrowrail
After reading the other suggestions, I'm going to suggest static site
generators that you can deploy to AWS s3 or Github pages. The most popular of
these is Jekyll
([https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll](https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll)) which
is written in Ruby, but here is a list of a bunch of others written in many
different languages:

[https://github.com/pinceladasdaweb/Static-Site-
Generators](https://github.com/pinceladasdaweb/Static-Site-Generators)

------
dustingetz
I pair program with one of my friends for 4 hours one evening a week every
single week for the last couple months. I intend to do this forever. We are
incredibly productive, pairing forces you to focus, it is an incredible
knowledge sharing mechanism, and we are absolutely steamrolling through things
we have to learn and yaks we ought to shave. And it's on the calendar, it's
repeatable, we never miss even when neither of us really have the energy to
work, something about two peoples combined energy gets us in the zone
instantly every single time.

------
mseebach
A lot of the advise here seems to be centered around re-training as a modern
web developer -- but what you're asking is "But sometimes I still find myself
wanting to setup a website every now and then".

If _that_ (and not retraining for a front-end web development job) is what you
want, play with Wordpress. It's mature and in extremely wide use. There are
tons of plugins and themes. You'll find the PHP setup familiar, and in my
experience, it's more fun to learn by getting 80% for free, and then tune
things around the margins.

------
barrystaes
Utilize your strengths (HTML/CSS/PHP/MySQL) they stil are valid and desired.

In case you have lots of time and insist on learning something new.. Since you
have no experience in the frameworks you mention, i suggest to not waste time
with these "previous" generation of libraries, and instead take a look at
(JavaScript) ES6. And subsequently React, which is a nice starting point and
in turn requires some considerable JS tooling (node, webpack, babel). But when
you're there, it feels like you're 10 years ahead!

------
59nadir
I don't think you really _have to_ learn a bunch more stuff, but I think it'll
be a really nice experience for you to learn a language like Elixir to in the
end use Phoenix to set up a web page.

Not because you need it, but because learning Elixir and Erlang with a purpose
will give you fresh eyes on development.

I think the above can be said about pretty much any language and their
frameworks. Just learn to have learned more and you'll be better for it.

------
antoniuschan99
JavaScript is king here. You probably know html and css well enough, but as
others have mentioned, it has changed a lot and responsive is important.

As for hipster.js, I would focus on understanding how JS acts as the glue for
web applications and then adopt a front end framework (eg. Angular, react) and
also a back end framework (node.js express, php laravel, etc)

------
jehna1
Nah, just get a job where you'll have to work with email templates. You will
outsmart any html5 kid with your colspans :D

~~~
jehna1
(For anyone who doesn't know this: You're still forced to do email templates
with tables becaus of Outlook)

~~~
oldo-nicho
The last couple of days I've been trying to refine an email template and after
many attempts finally started checking out some well designed examples with
chrome dev tools and discovered that they were constructed as tables. I
changed all my divs to table cells and finally got the thing to work!

------
mwpmaybe
There's a lot of great advice (and some not-so-good advice) in this thread. I
happen to be a '90s web guy who's spent the last six months building and
deploying an Ember.js SPA backed by a Sinatra.rb RESTful API. It shouldn't be
too hard to find me on Twitter if you want to chat. :-) Best of luck.

------
lmm
I think you have to try the tools, build things with them, and see what works.
I have my own preferences in terms of tooling, but every option has its
adherents, and we're not going to agree which framework is best in this
thread.

------
galephico
I'd recommend going through some courses like FreeCodeCamp [1] You have
courses about Bootstrap, React and much, much more

[1] [http://www.freecodecamp.com/](http://www.freecodecamp.com/)

------
haliphax
Throw away everything you've learned and start over. Pick something and run
with it rather than trying to master everything. Write a simple demo app in a
few frameworks, decide what works for you, and just go for it.

------
jaisonjustus
-I think it is better to advance in the technologies that you know like HTML/CSS and PHP. Advance what I mean is learning about things like

\- First of all don't worry about the new technologies coming out every day.
Rather than that give more focus to architecture. learn more about Design
patterns, its benefits, its implementation, Code structuring, Optimization,
Scalability etc.

\- If you don't know MVC architecture (the most popular architecture) then
learn a PHP framework like Laravel or Yii. The framework also teaches you
common methodologies like Object-oriented programming, Object-relational
mapping, Templating, etc.

\- Once you learned any framework, and, of course, like everyone you try to
build an application. Go for it. But at this type when you deal with HTML try
to improve it slowly. Like learning more about tags and setting up the layout.
Updating to HTML5 won't be that difficult. It's all matter in practice and you
can practice it while building the application. But don't think about CSS
until you finish the app.

\- After Building the app then think about CSS. now you spend time learning
CSS. Because most of the people think it's a matter of learning the properties
and use it. To some extent it's true, but when you deal with real scenarios
it's not. A simple CSS issue can bring down the business for an hour. It's
very critical. So give a bit time in learning CSS and CSS3. When you learning,
understand more about Organizing, Layouts & Web Typography. The terms sound
pretty big. But it's very easy to make it as a practice.

\- Once you understand CSS, add that knowledge to the app you are building.
But before that, I suggest you make a pencil and paper sketch of the page and
components. You can search for grid paper (with browser template) download and
print it. And use that for drawing, because it helps to calculate the pixel
values. and it helps you writing CSS. The sketch acts as a blueprint for the
CSS. and Its fun doing. you feel like an engineer.. :)

\- After all, if you are still thirsty then learn jquery. after that,
Javascript design patterns and then after any frameworks like ReactJS or
AngularJs or etc.

\- Learning a PHP frameworks help you a lot in learning HTML, CSS, and basic
javascript uisng jquery. so its worth trying.

* This is my modified based on my real experience. Long ago I started from system maintenance to a Geographical information system engineer to a backend developer to a frontend developer and now to a designer. and I also travel through the same path you travelled PHP, HTML and CSS. and little bit python. This is just a vague suggestion. feel free to ask more. All the best

Peace

------
peter303
Check to see if your local area has web developer meetups. Then you can
observe examples how they create web applications today. These meetups may be
under trendy names like "java" and "html5".

------
MrHygiene
blhack is right. PHP has undergone a lot of changes since the 90s, but it's
still the tops when it comes to open source languages that companies are
looking for...at least in Philly. It looked like everything was going to Ruby
a few years back, but PHP is holding steady. If you have the time, I'd learn
full stack JS - but you can't go wrong with PHP.

------
gedy
Would personally recommend you try some modern, beginner-friendly JS
frameworks, such as:

RactiveJS - [http://learn.ractivejs.org](http://learn.ractivejs.org)

KnockoutJS - [http://learn.knockoutjs.com](http://learn.knockoutjs.com)

These aren't the hottest or most popular technologies, but they teach good
fundementals and are easy to get started with, compared to the powerful but
complex frameworks like React and Angular, etc.

------
adnam
Basically "Remoting" is now called "Ajax" and front-end developers have build
tools now.

------
big_paps
I would recommend learning steps like this:

\+ Update your php knowledge to modern standards. (i.e. autoloader)

\+ Learn just some sass and use bootstrap 3.

\+ Use something like laravel as a php framework or even smaller like slim

\+ DONT get confused by the plethora of JS-Frameworks. DONT use build tools in
the beginning. Plain old <script> tags for the start.

Start building something nice.

sign up on laracast.com ;)

------
mwhite
I haven't made that journey, and it depends on how complicated the sites you
want to "setup" are, but here's my advice as someone doing full stack web
development for several years, having started from frameworkless PHP and now
preferring the Single Page App (SPA) stack of Flask + SQLAlchemy + flask-
restless (REST API framework) + Backbone models + React:

SPAs are only really necessary for certain use-cases, and while having a
strict client-server separation does have benefits, it also incurs upfront
costs.

You can still get by perfectly well generating HTML server-side with PHP or
Perl and MySQL. You may want to check out MariaDB, a fork of MySQL by the
original creator if you haven't heard of it. Postgres also finally just added
upsert (INSERT ON DUPLICATE ...), which might be the last real barrier to
migrating from MySQL, so if you don't have a ton of lingering MySQL-specific
knowledge, you might want to start with Postgres, as it seems to be the
default in a lot of FOSS situations these days.

There's certainly been lots of innovation in server-side web frameworks and
ORMs in PHP and Perl since the 90s. I can't speak to Perl but Slim is a good
PHP microframework and Propel is a nice ORM, though there are also more heavy-
duty frameworks such as Laravel.

If you don't mind learning a new language, I would recommend Python for any
backend web development that doesn't require squeezing out as low response
times as possible, which gives you the excellent Flask + SQLAlchemy, or Django
if you prefer a little more hand-holding.

You can still use JavaScript to add interactivity without making a SPA.
jQuery, Backbone, and React would do that in increasing levels of abstraction.

In the grand scheme of things, the changes to HTML/CSS since the 90s have been
relatively small. If you use Bootstrap you might not even have to worry about
them too much.

In summary,

\- MySQL or Postgres

\- Generate HTML server-side starting with a PHP or Python microframework and
ORM, upgrade to a batteries-included framework if you discover you need it

\- Use Bootstrap

\- add interactivity with jQuery or (if you want to learn it) React (React-
Bootstrap is nice); switch to full SPA if you discover you need it (in that
case you'll probably want react-router, SystemJS, and JSPM)

\- use Heroku or equivalent to avoid system administration

\- with the combination of cross-browser libraries (jQuery, React) and the
latest versions of all the popular browsers having fewer and fewer
inconsistencies, you actually don't need to worry too much about how to
support multiple browsers unless you want to support really old browsers that
only make up a few percent usage share combined.

------
gaius
There is nothing you need to do that you couldn't do with tools from 1999.
Nothing. And your users will be amazed at how fast and functional your sites
are.

Well OK there are some nice icons in Bootstrap, use those.

