Freelance Web Developer: Best Programming Languages To Learn

Are you looking to find out how to start as a freelance web developer In this video, we will cover which programming languages are currently in demand, how to learn them, and how to actually get started as a freelance web developer. I've been developing myself since 2008. And I've helped hundreds of people get started as a freelance web developer, or agency owners since 2014.

Before we dive into the list and how to get started, click on the subscribe button and the bell notification icon. So you get future updates on my videos for developers. 

So which programming languages are currently the most in-demand? The number one is Python. This is the only programming language that has experienced consistent growth over the past five years in terms of popularity, and that's in the top 10 of the current programming languages most in demand. Python integrates fantastically with C and c++, Python is used to build service side web applications. Mostly it's not used in a web browser. However, most Python developers use it to write web apps in combination with JavaScript. 

So that brings me to JavaScript JavaScript runs nearly everywhere, from mobile to cloud and browsers. It's mostly used in browser programming. Okay, now or as Java, Java is in slow and steady decline in terms of popularity, developers are switching to Python and alternatives instead. But it's still very highly ranked at a top 10 rankings because of its continued enterprise use. It's extremely popular just in slow and steady decline. 

And big companies use Java for enterprise-scale web applications. In terms of HTML and CSS, of course, you're gonna have to know that but I think everyone knows you need to learn HTML and CSS. Everyone who wants to be a web developer needs to learn these. And we're not going to go into detail in this video, since it's very obvious, even complete beginners know that now, PHP has been losing popularity at a very fast rate over the past five years, as you can see in the graph here (check the graphic in the video above), and developers are switching to Python and JavaScript. It's slow and old school. It's like an old school way of developing backends for websites. 

But again, it’s still popular and in-demand if you want a job. as a freelancer, maybe not really recommended right now, but still in demand. TypeScript is an open-source language, which builds on JavaScript, one of the world's most used tools, but adding static type definitions types provide a way to describe the shape of an object providing better documentation and allowing TypeScript to validate that your code is working correctly. 

So let's talk about Ruby. Ruby's a major player specifically, because of web development, the Rails framework for Ruby extends Ruby's popularity with people developing complex websites. It's not like demos, popular one right now. But you know, it's still very useful, very quick, and still very highly paid, if you can find the right type of client. Now Go or Go(lang) is considered to be an alternative to Python. 

There is an incessant discussion about going web development versus Python web development. Let's just say that Python is winning currently in terms of numbers. Now, in terms of SQL, this is part of the web development toolkit for full-stack and server-side developers. It's a must-have for any web developer who works with databases regularly. Look at his description of this video.

Because I can't put links directly in a video, I've compiled a list of free resources to learn the most popular languages below:

• Python - https://www.learnpython.org/
• Javascript - https://www.learn-js.org/
• Html - https://www.learn-html.org/ 

• PHP - https://www.learn-php.org/ 
• Typescript - https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/ 
• Ruby - https://www.learnrubyonline.org/ 
• Go - https://www.learn-golang.org/ 
• Shopify - https://developers.shopify.com/
• WordPress - https://codex.wordpress.org/
• Woocommerce: - https://docs.woocommerce.com/

Finally, let's talk about platforms. Okay, this part is very interesting. If you're looking to start relatively quickly, the fastest way I know to start as a freelance web developer right now is to specialize in platforms and CMS. Okay, so here are a few current examples of in-demand platforms for e-commerce and other web development. So WordPress is the granddaddy of content management systems. CMS In short. 37% of the websites in the world use WordPress according to wordpress.com. 

And WooCommerce is basically an open-source e-commerce plugin used for WordPress, which sounds like a plugin. What am I going to do with that? But it's actually a huge amount of e-commerce websites still use WooCommerce. Right now Shopify has entered the space many years ago, but recently, especially this year, they've experienced explosive growth because of various you know, YouTubers and marketers and you know, just the fact that Shopify is easy to use. It's comparable to WordPress, but it's specifically designed for e-commerce. 

They have decent documentation and tutorials for developers, companies maintaining Shopify sites, which sometimes are big companies as well, not just small companies regularly need developers. Companies building Shopify sites and Shopify web apps also need developers. They run a whole marketplace and have an ever-growing ecosystem for developers to explore with Shopify, you can start selling e-commerce sites in redesigns and move up to web apps and then upsell Marketing and tech services like conversion rate optimization. 

So it's an interesting industry and an interesting marketplace to enter potentially, if you have that type of interest. It's quite niche, but very profitable. Right now, the best way to get started as a developer, if you want to freelance is to go to websites like Upwork. And you know, primarily Upwork, you want to go on there, create an account and start bidding on projects. There’s already leads ready to go on there. 

So I have a whole playlist, a whole explanation of how to do this just for freelance web developers. Just start with the video right here. And then keep going down the playlist. It’s going to teach you exactly how to get on Upwork and get started as a web developer, like what exactly to do to get actual projects and actual clients that pay you thousands of dollars.

So click right here for the video and then watch the whole playlist.

And I'll see you in the video right here.