How to make a app or website

Question

Like when I saw how people do it. It looks easy when I do it, its hard

So how do I remember how to do it

Answer 1

I always feel that way too. The problem is when you follow some tutorial, you race through many things that the instructor has already debugged and is just showing his final working version. That makes it look really easy.

The best way to is understand and work on small parts at a time. To give an example, I'm working on a new project now that has many pages and includes user authentication, databases, and a lot more. It's overwhelming to think of the whole thing.

So I only worked on getting a navigation bar working and got all the empty pages in place. Nothing fancy. Just that one step can take several hours to get everything how I wanted it. In a tutorial it would look like 30 minutes. In reality it might be four hours.

Then I added the colors and layouts. Again, that takes quite a bit of time.

Then the database structure. A whole new challenge.

Then authentication features. A whole day can go to this if you are setting up registration, confirmation emails, etc.

Webforms, graphics, and all the other stuff can take days or even weeks to do. You have to relearn each little thing as you go.

You can't handle all these various technologies at once. It's too many pieces. Just break it down and do one thing and work on that until it's feeling good enough to move on.

As BroFar mentioned - also keep notes. I have a NOTES.md in every project where I put all the details I need to remember about that particular project. I work in a lot of languages so each project is very different. When I go back to the project it's good to review the NOTES.md and see what was I doing, what needs to be done, etc.

After a while some stuff becomes easy to remember. But there will always be bits that are forgotten. In my case, this is a web project so I have all sorts of details specific to that.

If you use github - be sure you do not put passwords or secret keys in the NOTES.md or be sure to add NOTES.md to your .gitignore. You don't want to accidentally expose those details.

One bite at a time.

Answer 2

Theunknownduck alot of it depends on workflow and practice practice practice...

In the early stages of learning and development it is always good to establish a notebook so you can take notes and reflect back on what you learn or have learned along the way.

Answer 3

if you're in a hurry and just want a simple site up and running, there's also template driven premade website services. I'm not saying it's the best option, but it's an option.
But yes, being able to do it from scratch is harder but more rewarding. As Jerry Hobby said, divide your project into blocks, work on them separately, test, iterate, refine. Start from simple. It will grow in complexity over time...
Don't overthink it.

Answer 4

𝓣𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓴 𝔂𝓸𝓾

Answer 5

Jerry Hobby wow! I am pretty shocked by your answer. It would really take 4 hours to set up a nav bar? Is this really expected for a professional web dev, or is your main area of expertise something else and you just like to moonlight as a web dev just because you like to do everything?
Then again i often wonder how a web dev spends his entire day setting up websites, how can there be so much work to be consistently busy. So, if what you are describing is accurate I guess that answers my question.
Truth is I often think I would like to speak to a pro web dev about what life looks like for him problem is that I don’t have anyone to speak to 😕 and the discuss section here really isn’t meant for this. If any pro web devs out there are willing to have me dm them to ask about this, please let me know.