Master this one skill to become a web developer

I maintain a deeply held conviction that there is only one skill that you must master to become a web developer. It's something that I've struggled to understand all my life. It's a skill that I learned while training for my first triathlon in 2011 and I relearned when raising my son.

Without this skill, you'll accomplish nothing in life. And the web development trade will always be just out of reach if you don't master this skill first.

Ok, enough teasing. What is it?

How a duck can help you solve problems

I'm serious. A duck can help you solve problems. To be clear, I'm not saying a duck can solve your problems, but ducks do have a knack (quack?) for helping you solve your own problems. It's real. Stop laughing.

Here's how it works.

Get a non-living duck. Rubber ducks are super popular, but stuffed formerly-living ducks or stuffed never-lived-before ducks work just as well. Put it on or near your desk. When you get stuck on a problem, ask the duck for help. Voila!

Why beginner web developers should write as much as possible

I'm a big fan of writing as a way to reinforce the things you learn, celebrate your successes, learn from mistakes, help others, and see how far you've come. In fact, I believe in the discipline of chronicling your learning journey enough to make it a key feature of the future of New Method. I already have two aspiring web developers lined up to blog their learning journey on New Method and hope to have many more. I want New Method to be a place where beginner web developers can talk about their journey, the personal side of it, not just the technical side of it.

Writing about your learning journey shouldn't be hard, either. It should feel natural. It should feel like updating a friend about how your newfound education is coming along. So, because I like lists, here are a few ideas of things your can write about while you're learning web development:

The New Method Handbook for Learning Web Development

Have you decided to learn web development, but don’t know where to start or what path to follow? You're not the only one. Learning web development is hard, especially as an adult with other responsibilities.

Just making the decision to learn web development creates a thousand questions. Your first step may have been Google, which gave you about 311,000,000 results ranging from college courses to YouTube tutorials. Maybe you asked some web developer friends and they pointed you to books on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, or Python.

There's a plethora of content options for learning web development, but making sense of all of it is overwhelming.

How to use Treehouse and Codecademy together (jQuery example)

While many see Treehouse and Codecademy as competitors, I see them as the perfect compliment to one another. One is excellent for learning introductory concepts slowly with a human "teacher". The other is excellent for moving quickly through the nuts and bolts of a concept. Together, you can learn individual concepts thoroughly without having to "Google around" for more tutorials.

Let's use jQuery as an example programming language (really, it's a JavaScript library) that you can learn with both Treehouse and Codecademy.

Learn better by cycling your intensity

When learning web development I found a special trick that worked well for me and still works today. It improves my retention of lessons, reduces fatigue, removes the risk of burnout, and doesn't sacrifice momentum. I started cycling my intensity.

Doing it wrong

When I first started learning web development, I tried to stuff it all in my head as fast as possible. I joined Treehouse and went through a ton of lessons. I read a book on HTML and CSS like it was a textbook. I read a book on Ruby from cover to cover and highlighted half the text. I joined a developer bootcamp called Bloc to learn even faster. I did Codecademy lessons and read as much online as my eyes could stand.