You don’t need to know any coding to build websites and make a good living from it. I have built advanced WordPress websites for years, gotten well paid, with no need for coding, except for a little CSS play here and there. But I decided to get into coding for other reasons. Here are my brutal findings and how I would choose my path today as a beginner web developer.
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JavaScript sucks -just so you know
If we’re in a similar boat, you may be one of many looking to NOT have a job or suffer through a terrible educational system. Instead, you would rather want to build your own income platform and one-man career.
Building cool stuff online is one of those careers you can choose. And it’s easy to get started. Sensible people also choose to follow their passion for freedom and purpose-filled work.
Since I’m a Web Designer, I will be focusing on coding languages and frameworks to build things for the web. And maybe mobile. But when I started searching, and asking experienced people around me “what coding languages should I learn for the web?…
I got too many different answers.
Since the world is mad and there are about 9000 programming languages in existence, you may just feel like running screaming out into the forest at night. According to AI research, only 50 of them are widely used and in use. But even that is insane.
After about a year of researching and testing, here’s what I have ended up with so you don’t have to fumble around in that dark, lonely forest.
JavaScript – I thought it was a fucking mess. But it’s good to get the basics. And it’s driving all other JS-based frameworks.
- VueJS – as the primary framework
- TailwindCSS – as a CSS and styling framework
- Some UI component library – Like Shadcn (Using TailwindCSS for styling)
- Turso or Supabase as a database provider
With this collection of frameworks and tools, you can build a lot of cool stuff. Of course, you will most likely have to mix in other tools and services as well. Depending on what you choose to build and what you want to learn.
When learning coding and starting to get frustrated from the huge amounts of languages and frameworks, it’s still important to know that code in itself will never work the same in all hardware environments and purposes.
So of course, we do need a variety of languages for various purposes. Though, the acceleration of it all has shot in the air in the last few years.
How my coding path almost ended up in Neverland.
I have always been interested in technology. And I loved coding from the early days, even though I never fully got into it. Having a deep interest should make it easier, right?
Right.
My career as a Web Designer has for the most part been focused on custom and advanced WordPress websites. And as a Shopify Expert. Actually, the first and only one in Norway.
You could easily learn web design and go the same path as well.
You can make a pretty good living from building quite advanced WordPress sites with premium designs and more complex solutions. Even with fancy integrations. Knowing WordPress well and what it’s capable of is worth cash.
For my part, I have come to the point where I want to advance and be able to have control to build more advanced stuff. Like web apps and mobile apps.
I’m not sure when I went full in to discover what coding language could be my game. But it was at one of the many coffee shops I go to here in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I spent time researching various coding languages, what they are used for, and how it’s been developing.
I don’t know if it’s just because I’m a Libra in my star sign. But it didn’t take too long before my head started cooking.
Looking into the various programming languages, its structure, syntax, and flow, synapses started jamming up in my head.
I quickly discovered that the level of structure, logic, and methods of writing code on this planet must reflect the human consciousness!?
It’s a fucking mess.
Since I was focusing on building things for the web and mobile, there are of course paths I would have to consider. JavaScript is kind of a must-learn. But after spending some time on it, I was getting closer and closer to giving up and feeling burned out.
To me, JavaScript was, and still is, a smoky slow-burning dumpster fire with a weird, non-logical structure. I have been thinking to myself that there MUST be better ways to structure code?
I get it that a “coding language” will have to be written in whatever keyboard language, signs, and hieroglyphs we have available. But to me, the confusion has been at a grand scale when it comes to stuff like () – {} – [] “ -and shit like that.
Where to use comma, semi-colon, curly braces, parentheses, square brackets, and other combinations of these.
I think if a coding language was done by aliens from the Pleiades, it would be beautiful to look at, be logical, and make sense. I think I would be able to understand what the code would do without even having to learn so much deep mystical logic-less sauce.
As a Libra, we like balance, harmony, and beauty. Which I think no coding language written by a human has. Sad.
How I actually began to learn code
I have been doing coding for some time now. But I still don’t call myself a developer. That’s because to me, I would have to be able to actually “develop” something without having to use crutches.
I need to get to a level where I actually understand the structure, functionality, and methods of the framework of my choice. It’s fine to use AI; but not as the primary engine behind whatever I’m working on.
If you’re feeling like this as well, here’s how I have managed to let some of the developer processes and code snippets finally sink in and be accepted by my harmonic reactor. The brain.
Here’s how I moved through the wasteland of programming and found some light after the smoke cleared.
By not following too many tutorials.
If you have tried spending some time learning already and tried out a few tutorials, you may have caught on to the idea of “tutorial hell”. It’s the never-ending cycle of mindlessly watching others doing cool stuff that you should have done yourself. But you won’t by just watching tutorials, copy and pasting, and grinning at the finished result.
It’s cool with some code on the screen. But it turns powerful when you actually write it yourself and make stuff happen.
By ditching most of the teachers out there.
A lot of YouTubers, course platforms, and people teaching coding actually suck at it. It’s like with the school system. Most teachers are bad teachers.
I have gone through quite a long list of online gurus on coding and development. I dropped 90% of them.
Learning programming by not understanding the code brings useless programming skills.
They may have some developer charisma, but they don’t explain the WHY behind the code. So what I ended up with is only 2-3 people I can actually learn from. Programmers that actually explain the logic and reason behind the little pieces of code snippets so that I understand what it goes for.
By switching between 2-3 learning platforms,
One of my methods to learn a more solid understanding of what I was trying to build was to follow along beginner courses from two or three different learning platforms at the same time. This helped.
The reason is simple: I got the 3 different explanations for the same topics.
And for some details around coding, one person may just have the right way of explaining and showing details in the code that made it click in your mind.
Do complete tutorials without fully understanding it.
Another method that has helped me grasp some of the methods and workflow in frameworks programming is to keep following specific tutorials even if I haven’t fully understood the concepts yet.
The reason is that it lets me stay in the “developer” flow as I would be working on a big project myself. I would be exposed to so much time in the editor, the language (VueJS ++), and how people think when putting the pieces together, that things started to click. I subconsciously picked up more and more details in my mind.
So, when I got back to one of my programming courses, I started recognising things more easily and built up a stronger understanding of why we did certain things.
Now, along with this way of learning, there is another teacher in town that has helped me a lot. And actually, he is able to teach me details no human was able to. And that’s AI.
Using AI as a tutor and mentor.
Yeah, here we are. Finally touching on the AI stuff. It’s taken off, it’s growing, and it’s not going away. But it will most likely change a bit.
And for now, at least AI is not an emotional entity. So when we talk about how AI will replace programmers, at least it can’t replace humans on that level.
I got better at understanding code snippets and logic from AI. For now, I’m using Windsurf in combination with their build in AL chat. It’s awesome.
This editor is just a branch-out from VSCode, with modifications.
While I test out code snippets, do a course, or follow along with a tutorial project, I can get child-level explanations in the right sidebar for the whole project codebase, or a single line of code.
Another thing is to use this AI “mentor” chat as your real tutor. And for many of the new AI coding platforms, you can set preferences for the language model you are working with. Like:
"We will be building this project using VueJS and TailwindCSS. Please suggest other integrations you find appropriate for the "Application Name" I‘m building. You will also act as my coding mentor, and explain reasons and logic as we go."This will give you a private programming coach that makes sure you get the reason and logic behind various development projects.
Besides that, I am also using AI to set up boilerplate projects for ideas I have. Then I continue by taking over the code, and use AI to explain things as we go.
So where’s the best place to learn?
I’ll give you my resources and platform to learn and grow your skills. First, let me present to you my two primary human coding mentors that I find have the capacity to explain things in a meaningful way.
Again, I’m focusing on my recommended path as mentioned in the beginning. But these people and course platforms also have other languages and frameworks. So it’s a good place to start for most web-related development.
Individuals
- Brad Traversy – Well-known YouTuber on coding and development
- Maximilian Schwarzmüller – Founder of Academind course platform
Course platforms
- Academind.com – Maximilian Schwarzmüller course platform
- TraversyMedia.com – Brad’s course platform
- VueMastery.com – Clean and well made course platform for VueJS
- VueSchool.com – VueJS course platform
- DesignCode.io – Well made and diverse course platform by Meng To.
What coding languages should I learn to build apps and websites?
There’s obviously a shit-load of languages and frameworks to choose from. But let’s remove 99% of them for now.
And one other tip I want to mention when thinking of building websites using code is the Astro framework. It has become a popular JS framework to build snappy and fast websites.
I built this website (JohnMac.pro) on the Astro framework some time ago. But after a long time, I decided to go back to WordPress. At least temporarily. Because I didn’t keep a good enough SEO structure in the code on my Astro site from the start.
You can check out Astro.build here. If you’d ask me “what coding languages should I learn to build websites“, this is the one I would go for. At least as long as it’s not going to be a more advanced web app.
When you get closer to building app-like solutions, then I would go for VueJS. Simply because I like the framework and the organisation behind it. I just “vibe” with their branding and concept.
And to finish off here. Talking about CSS, I thought it’s not a coding language. It’s a must-know. And for my part, I just love the TailwindCSS framework and UI components. It looks good. And writing Tailwind classes just works well for me. So that is a solid CSS framework I would go for.
So, good luck with not getting crazy in the misty dark forest of programming languages and modern JS frameworks.
Just pick what you’re attracted to, and spend time on it. There’s certainly enough free education available. And also premium paid courses. Just don’t go to school for this stuff.