Development roadmaps are very common among those who want to become front-end developers. However, they are freaking intimidating! Look at this one, for example.

While the authors of those roadmaps have the best intentions, they may actually scare people and deter them from actually starting their learning journey.

Another problem is that it makes people think that it’s a completely linear process (i.e. that you have to master one topic before moving on to the next one). In many cases, that’s not true.

It’s OK to learn a topic only partially and then move on to learn another language or technology. Every piece of knowledge is a tool: the more tools/knowledge you have, the more things you’ll be able to do. But this also means that you can already build things with the knowledge/tools you already have.

For those who are in their very early stages and want to become a front-end developer: I’d suggest to learn the basics of the following languages, tools, and libraries:

  • HTTP
  • HTML and CSS
  • JavaScript
  • Git
  • A front-end library or framework, preferably React because it’s more widely used (and that means, there are more job offers)