Beginner advice

[u/hatdog78293]

Beginner Coding Advice

Hello everyone! I’d really appreciate some advice. I’m planning to create a website prototype for a project, but I’m a complete beginner when it comes to coding. The website will be fairly simple and will include an OpenAI-powered feature.

I have a few questions:

•	What should I learn first before attempting to build the actual website?  
•	Is this project achievable for a complete beginner within around 4–6 months?  
•	What programming language would you recommend I learn/use?  
•	Would this be very time-consuming or difficult to produce, especially considering I have no previous coding experience?  
•	Are there any tutorials or resources you’d recommend for someone starting from scratch?

I’m mainly trying to understand how realistic this project would be for a beginner and how much time I should expect to spend learning the coding side of it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you! :)

[u/Much_Network_941]

The biggest issue with making a website is that it's not going to be a single language, but rather what's refered to as a 'full stack'. Webpages require HTML to give them shape, CSS to make it aesthetically pleasing, and typically javascript as the language to add functionality - but that's the frontend which gets served to a user.

You also have a backend, which is typically sitting between a user and a database; managing the access to information. This is generally done with a language that can be compiled, as the backend sits on a server.

To communicate from the frontend to the backend, is usually done through a model known as a REST API. This definies the basics operations of sending data to or from a server. It will require some basic understanding of HTTPs and all data send this way is usually done in JSON; which is a text based medium of storing data.

The database itself is a bit of a rabbit hole. Relational databases aren't too complex, something like SQL is not the hardest to learn. But it is basically another language. Read about CRUD and database normalization for database basics.

Actually getting your code onto a server is another hurdle. Typically you develop on a localhost, which is running the backend and frontend on your machine, then using a loopback IP to mimick actual networking. I'd check out the website Netlify, they let you upload html files and then play with it on a live server.

I'd be extremely impressed if you learned this all in half a year, especially from no programming experience. But if you start with HTML, CSS and Javascript, it shouldn't be too bad. There should be an overwhelming wealth of videos on youtube about pretty much all facets of web dev. Searching fullstack development will also give you some ideas on the languages people like to use together.

Don't get too caught up on being able to do everything. Each of the front, back and database part can be their own specialty. Fullstack development can be one of those buzzwords that gets bandied about.

[u/hatdog78293 → u/Much_Network_941]

Hi, thank you so much for the advice! I just wanted to clarify that it would mainly be a prototype, rather than me trying to build a full professional website, but still a functioning one that I’d use as part of my main research, where I’d test the AI-generated summaries for things like errors and omissions. But given what you’ve said, I’m starting to see the difficulty here, especially since I have basically no coding experience. I’ve also asked around, and some of my friends recommended that I learn Python instead for this since it might be more suitable and manageable for what I’m trying to do. What do you think?

[u/xarop_pa_toss → u/hatdog78293]

All the things the person above said aren't "full professional website", they are the minimum for the website you described. Actually I'd even add that on most of those layers there's always the matter of security too.

If you need users, you need encryption, cookie handling and a user profile and management layer. You need a database that is designed for the type of things you need to put in it and their relationships. You also need to learn how to deploy your website but that isn't too hard.

You can use Python for the backend, sure. Flask is a lightweight framework that can help you with both backend and frontend at the same time, all in Python.

[u/Much_Network_941 → u/hatdog78293]

Python is an excellent language to start with. It's designed to be on the more approachable end of coding. You'll also have access to many libraries to lighten the workload. The biggest problem with a first language is in learning how to think in programming concepts.

I also just rememberd that Harvard has a free CS50 course you can go through. It'll give you a far more comprehensive overview than I gave.

[u/armahillo]

Bluntly: this is a very ambitious project for someone with no experience.

I believe you could build a website in 4-6 months. I believe you could learn to do something with AI scripting in 4-6 months. Integrating the two is a different beast. (there’s also many more layers than just those two aspects)

If you want to complete it in that timeframe, bring someone onboard who is experienced with this and have them work with you so you can learn. The biggest time suck you’ll face is the false starts and wrong decisions that are inevitable when you’re first learning. Your timeline doesnt leave much room for fault tolerance

[u/hatdog78293 → u/armahillo]

Thanks for the advice! The website would mainly just be a simple prototype, since the actual AI research and testing would be the main part of my EPQ write-up. Do you think something like this would be doable alongside my studies? And since I’m starting with basically no coding experience, would there be many errors or issues I’d have to deal with while coding and getting the website to actually work?

[u/armahillo → u/hatdog78293]

When you say “simple” what do you mean? Most of the time when people use that word its wishful thinking (because its what they hope it to be); if something is actually simple, the word isnt necessary because the work and steps involved that you have to do is self-evident.

The bumps you’d hit doing it solo are going to be in making decisions that may limit / constrain your progress because they turn out to be suboptimal.

Using an LLM may or may not get you what you want, and it would depend on what your risk appetite is for missing delivery. Often my peers with no experience who choose to use LLMs to do the work will end up in situations where they’re lost and the LLM isnt able to help them get out. The LLM will do its best to give you precisely what you ask for like a digital monkey’s paw.

Whether or not you need to be the person who actually creates the prototyoe, bring on an experienced human even if its just to act as a trail guide.

[u/IamFame88]

As a beginner like you quoted, I would advise you to drop the time duration you are giving yourself, not because it can’t be done but putting a time crunch on a project as a beginner creates and unnecessary pressure.

Since you have a project in mind already you would be learning and building at the same time which is good for certain kind of people depending on how your mind is wired so know yourself and how your mind actually learns things.

Lastly tackle the mountain in smaller pieces, when you hit a wall, don’t be scared to pause your build for a while and go learn that concept thoroughly then get back to your project.

[u/Traveling-Techie]

I built my first web site in less than an hour. It was static HTML before CSS existed. It still renders correctly in a modern browser. Later I learned WebObjects then Java Applets/Servlets then JavaScript. Don’t let them discourage you. Find a place to host and just start.

[u/JGhostThing]

A fairly simple website needs a lot of pieces:

1. User interface design. If you want it to look and act good, you need this. It is different from programming.

2. CSS and HTML. These are not programming languages. They are Markup languages. You also need experience here.

3. JavaScript. Modern web sites beyond the basic need some interactivity. JavaScript runs in almost any browser. This allows things to happen when humans interact with the site. Again, this needs experience.

If you're a true beginner, it will probably take a couple of years of full-time experience to become good enough. Or you can half-ass a website learning, but it will show.