
Ask HN: How to learn front-end development as a back-end web developer? - lichtenberger
Hi, maybe it&#x27;s best starting with a book&#x2F;course about plain Javascript, as I always feel overwhelmed by all those Javascript frontend frameworks (or typescript)!?<p>That said it would probably be best to write code in Kotlin and simply transpile it to Javascript ;-)<p>Any recommendations?<p>Happy easter :-)
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shishy
I built a website using plain HTML/CSS/JS; it could be anything as simple as a
Tic Tac Toe game to something more feature rich.

Most valuable lesson there was in understanding what it's like to work with
the native DOM, since that usually gets abstracted away when you throw in
something like React/Angular/Vue.

Then I rebuilt the same thing using Angular2+ and React, but paid attention to
what set of things were made easier (and in some cases, more difficult).

Once I got the basics down I picked one I liked (React) and began using it and
diving more in-depth (best practices, reading blogs, codebases, etc.).

~~~
lichtenberger
Great advice, thanks :)

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LarryMade2
Don't do all that crap.

For me I try out sites, discover things I like and then search for it along
with the term -jquery or "vanilla javascript" and work out just the code I
need.

For reading:

For HTML find a good book on the basics (I had used Visual Quickstart Guide to
HTML, but I bet there might be better ones now), for CSS I recommend "Stylin'
with CSS" which will keep things simple. Maybe "Handcrafted CSS" to learn how
to refine styles even more.

Another great common sense design book is "Don't Make Me Think" will go a long
way into determining what would be best in design and UX.

You will find when you drill down to that - you don't need all that much much
JavaScript at all. A lot of those templates and frameworks are only great when
you don't know what you want but will quickly/easily get the pretty pictures
and slick animations, later there's a price to pay to maintain or refactor.

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adnanazadsg
Depends on what you mean by front-end development.

If its HTML/CSS and some javascript to make it work - the best way to learn is
probably to just find designs for websites/apps on a site like dribbble and
try to hack it together. Try codepend.io as well - looking at how others
accomplished something styling you might be struggling with also works well.

If you're talking about the more modern description of front-end - which might
mean ReactJS, VueJS, or any of the other hundreds of modern frameworks - I'd
say follow some tutorials on YouTube to get the basics and then just practice
building simple apps.

For someone who is a backend developer and already knows how to code, it
shouldn't be too difficult. You'll probably have a harder time learning CSS
and understanding good design and UX.

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declank
Happy easter :) If you already know some HTML/CSS I recommend
[https://adamschwartz.co/magic-of-css/](https://adamschwartz.co/magic-of-css/)

I often use it as a refresher

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lichtenberger
Ah yes, nowadays we also have Node.js and stuff like that, but I'm working
with Java and lately a bit Kotlin.

So more like learning Javascript/Typescript and Frameworks as for instance
React or Vue.js

