Ask HN: Are all successful side-projects in the form of a website?

[bhnmmhmd]

I want to start working on some side-projects, but I have zero knowledge of web development. My question is:

Are web development skills the only skills I can use to make side-projects? If yes, could you please explain what's the best way to learn web-dev in a short time? If no, what other skills can be useful for side-projects?

[dguo]

A side project definitely does not have to be a website. It can be anything! You could make a mobile app, a command line tool, or even a new operating system.

It doesn't even have to be purely software. You could use Raspberry Pi to do a hardware project, for example. Check out these projects: https://www.hackster.io/raspberry-pi/projects

[bhnmmhmd → dguo]

Thanks! I guess even if it's not a website, eventually it needs one for introducing the project.

[dguo → bhnmmhmd]

A landing page can be helpful, but just having a good README can take you pretty far.

If you do get to the point of wanting to make a website, I recommend learning HTML, CSS, and JS. There are plenty of styling frameworks like Bootstrap[1] and Semantic UI[2] that would let you create a decent looking website without in-depth CSS knowledge. If you just need a simple landing page, some HTML plus a styling framework can do the job nicely.

If your project is a website itself, learning a front end framework might be the way to go, depending on what the website entails. Some of the more popular ones nowadays are Angular[3], React[4], and Vue[5].

[1] http://getbootstrap.com/

[2] https://semantic-ui.com/

[3] https://angular.io/

[4] https://facebook.github.io/react/

[5] https://vuejs.org/

[bhnmmhmd → dguo]

This is great! Thanks for your help.