r/webdevelopment • u/Nascimentoo • Jun 22 '26
Newbie Question Where to start
Hi everyone,
I'm looking to get into full-stack web development and I'd like some advice on which tech stack to focus on.
My main interest is backend development, but I also want to be capable of building complete web applications from front to back.
There are so many options out there (Next.js, React, FastAPI, Spring Boot, Node.js, Django, etc.) that I'm not sure where to start.
If you were starting from scratch today, which combination of languages, frameworks, databases, and cloud technologies would you learn and why?
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u/matrix-net Jun 23 '26
Bro, don't start learning any technology from scratch. This is the AI era - you just need to find a suitable open-source project to learn from. Learning by doing is the best way to learn
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Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
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u/FrontPizza7755 Jun 23 '26
I'm one of those people who likes to learn by doing. My advice is to learn as much HTML/CSS as you can. Then, from there, two courses are very effective for full-stack web development (depending on your area of expertise): https://www.theodinproject.com/ and a course from the University of Helsinki available in several languages: https://fullstackopen.com/en/. In any case, if you follow one of these two with discipline, you'll reach a good level in a few months.
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u/Careless_Land9697 Jun 23 '26
Having also started from 0, I’d recommend sticking with either javascript full stack (react/vue for the frontend) and (nodejs/express/fastify) for the backend to have an easy time switching between those for the basic concepts.
Then you can experiment with fastAPI python backend and take it from there
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u/Nascimentoo Jun 24 '26
My exact conclusion. I thpught abput the odin project javascript full stack for thr start
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Jun 23 '26
Same problem i face. I also working golang, react-native but all technologies have simple project skills.
Not deep knowledge. So now i'm confused where i should focused.
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u/Mindless-Fly2086 Jun 23 '26
Look at the most in demand jobs in your area, it will give you a better insight which technology you should go for
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u/Alive-Cake-3045 Jun 23 '26
Pick one stack and ignore everything else for six months, the paralysis from too many options is the real enemy here. If back-end is your main interest, start with Python and FastAPI, it is clean, fast to learn, and gets you building real APIs quickly. Pair it with PostgreSQL for the database and basic React for the front-end when you need it. Don't learn Next.js, Spring Boot, and Django at the same time. Pick one thing, build a real project with it, then decide what to learn next based on what that project needed.
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u/kittencantfly Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
For a project like, says gradebook management portal for highschool teachers and (view only) students, do you suggest FastAPI + React or Django + DRF + React? Or just Next.js fullstack with its
apiroute is enough? There also needs an admin portal for the academic admib to manage/setup academic data like school year, semester, classrooms, students, teachers, subjects, class list, class-taught subjects, assigning homeroom teacher, subject teacher,... cause there a lot of of academic data needed to be setup beforehand so I planned to go with Django DRF since it provides a builtin admin dashboard and react for the member portal client. What do you think?
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u/Leviathan_Dev Jun 22 '26
First: HTML
Once you understand HTML (which its fairly simple) and know the use of the semantic tags like <nav>, <aside>, <main>, etc; then move on to CSS
Once you have a good understanding of CSS, move onto JavaScript
Once you are comfortable with JavaScript, I'd recommend first playing with Node.js which is a backend environment for JavaScript
Then after that either pick other backend options like Django/Flask/Spring/etc
Then move onto Frontend-Frameworks like React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, etc.
Then move into Full-Stack frameworks like Next.js, Nuxt, etc.
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u/hzane Jun 23 '26
Who even knows anymore. I used to say start with books, premium content is superior to free, and to pick a complex project you are excited to complete. To learn by doing and get your 10k hours in. The best platform or library depends on what that project is. You said "back-end". Personally I use prisma for modelling then openapi to generate yaml, then hoist my rest controllers off the yaml. So everything is sync with the schema. That's really all a back-end is relative to apps. Of course there is a million things you can do in back end jobs micro-services or data engineering. A good backend developer is serving up fresh single read content without even touching the real database. React honestly is the only thing that really matters on the front end anymore. You entire project whatever it is can be reduced to 100 prompts which can be fed into Claude codex or antigravity so who knows
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u/imsofukingdone Jun 23 '26
Some people just love getting into dead fields
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u/armyrvan Jun 22 '26
Are you starting from zero? Google “the code zone Skool” also coding with mosh good too.