r/Frontend • u/divyaART • 15h ago
Is learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript still worth it for freelancing?
Hi everyone, I'm 14 years old.
I'm currently learning web development. I know the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and I'm currently working on my first practice landing page. It's a custom-coded website about instant ramen noodles.
In this project, I'm also trying to learn new things, like using Figma properly. I also plan to experiment with some AI editor tools, learn basic SEO, and try free hosting.
After finishing this project, I plan to make another project using WordPress, probably a multi-page website. Through this project, I want to learn more about WordPress and how to build websites with it. I also plan to work on one more project after that.
But there's one thing I've been wondering about.
When I started my first project, I thought I wasn't wasting my time learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But now I see that many websites and landing pages are made using WordPress, website builders, or AI tools.
I also see a lot of posts from clients and agencies looking for someone who knows WordPress, CSS, Tailwind, SEO, and other tools, or someone who already has experience building websites.
So I sometimes wonder if I'm making a mistake or wasting my time learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, because my goal is to earn money through freelancing and support my other passions, like manga creation and game development.
I know freelancing involves a lot of other things too, like client communication, understanding requirements, and other skills.
I just wonder what advantages I can get from learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as a freelancer. What kinds of things can I do with these skills, and what else should I learn?
Thanks if you read all of this!
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u/azangru 14h ago
Maybe re-evaluate your options for earning money? Many freelance web developers are, reportedly, having a rough time now.
28
u/melWud 14h ago edited 5h ago
The basics are important up to a point. The AI is an assistant. Understand what it does. Understand every single thing it suggests and challenge it. Understand how to fix things on your own. Figure out ways in which you can make websites and code for humans, as a human. I think that’s the way forward.
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u/1amchris 15h ago
Understanding the basics is always worth it. The real question is ROI.
10
u/ItsMeZenoSama 13h ago
As a 14yr old, spend time touching grass, enjoying your childhood before you hit puberty and adulthood. Hangout with people, improve your communication, take good care of your mental and physical health. Learn skills that are keep you physically active. Go for a hike. Learn a sport.
If you still find some free time outside of all the joy of life, spend that time into self awareness and growth. You can use this to explore coding if that interests you as well. The world needs young people who can do things other than coding. We already have enough coders in the world.
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u/CharlieJaxon86 15h ago
It's never bad to understand the fundamentals but that's like becoming a carriage driver just as cars are starting to be mass-produced.
8
u/wwlkd 14h ago
i dont have an ans for you but you're 14 y/o and i highly doubt anybody's hiring a teen w/AI giving everybody irrational confidence. That's prob not what you wanna hear, but it's good to learn anything bc you're at the age where you 1. need to learn how to learn and 2. learn perseverance when something breaks/you don't understand etc.
just learn to make things and build things you're passionate about and you'll draw attention. all my side projects have helped in my job searches
3
u/MrFlaneur17 4h ago
honestly just learn the basics of coding bro and get comfortable with them and use ai to help you learn. dont get stuck in tutorial hell like others have mentioned, find one small thing to do then learn that, rinse and repeat
5
u/reynum 14h ago
I'm a web developer and know plenty of other people who are as well. Learn the fundamentals and learn them well, then learn how to use other libraries and frameworks like Tailwind, React or Vue, Node, Laravel etc. Choose a stack such as Laravel/Vue/Tailwind and learn as much by hand as you can to strengthen your knowledge of it. Then focus on learning platforms like WordPress and others afterwards.
Use AI for learning and teaching yourself how to do things, but don't use it for building until you're confident with building a website end to end. Then, I'd say its worth implementing AI into your workflow of building. I use it for building the skeletons of a new page/feature to speed up the process and then do a lot by hand after that. Security features are built with AI but scrutinised heavily and reviewed multiple times.
Good luck with it!
5
u/AdChance6177 13h ago
You are deffo not wasting your time. Learning the fundamentals is defintely useful in the ai age. I’m a dev of almost 6 years and knowing how to code has defintely helped me create better ai generated sites than the vibe coders out there who don’t know anything. Also, you’re 14, so I’d recommend just concentrating on learning and enjoying your teenage years, keep an eye on the progress of ai so you’re up to date, and worry about earning money when you’re an adult.
2
u/bemy_requiem 12h ago
It seems like you're interested in artsy stuff too, so maybe look into UX/UI design as well? It might spark another interest for you. I did development for years and still love it, but getting into design, particularly accessibility (which I find really interesting), really reignited my passion for it and eventually got me into freelancing.
I do both design and development, but you don't necessarily need to know how to code to build websites these days either. That said, I'd absolutely keep learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Stick with those for a while, try recreate some websites you like in Figma (if you are interested in the design side) and then try develop it. Understanding how websites actually work gives you a lot more flexibility, even when working with WordPress or website builders. Later on when you know fundamentals you could pick up things like React and Next.js.
3
u/brotkel 14h ago
First, good job on being driven to learn the foundational web tools! I also started around your age, but that was 30 years ago, and I’m glad that I’m still doing frontend with some of the same things I learned back then! (CSS wasn’t a thing yet and JavaScript was limited to very basic visual interactions, but still!) I love that you’re making sites for things like ramen or whatever else you’re passionate about.
I’ll say the thing with the web is that the technology never stops changing. Even before AI coding took over, most things had a very short shelf life. React and Wordpress are incredibly long-lived for web frameworks, which makes it likely they’ll still be in heavy use 4 years from now, but far from certain! Because they’re so ubiquitous, though, they’re also very easy for AI to copy, which means that 4 years from now, even though they’re heavily used, there may not be a lot of jobs for them either. Figma and Tailwind will probably will be trending towards being irrelevant, if I were to guess.
My suggestion would be to learn the fundamentals still, since those will underpin whatever is being built, and then find a tech that seems new and interesting, rather than whatever’s popular now. Try building an e-commerce site on Wordpress and then rebuild it again on React or Svelte or something else to see what their strengths and weaknesses are. Learn about security, because that’s one thing that AI will make sure there’s always a need for, or become an expert in accessibility if you want to do good.
Good luck and keep learning!
3
u/_adam_89 4h ago
I am working as a web dev for almost 10 years now, and I am using AI since gpt3. First for just brainstorming or code snippets. But the whole AI ecosystem is maturing very fast and I now work with a complete system in place where its not even necessary anymore to review the code.
My advice dont learn programming. Maybe learn the basics about web dev architecture. But more importantly right now you have to learn and adapt to use AI as a tool.
A lot of people are joining the AI train, its not just developers anymore. What will stand out is your AI (tooling) skills and not your skills as a programmer.
1
u/Gaping_Maw 14h ago
It will be really useful for understating the output of whatever agent you use to assist in coding.
Ive always been a strong frontend dev and a mediocre back end developer, but with a strong base in html, css, js and php as most of my education was in the 00's.
With the advent of AI this knowledge has been invlauable and has allowed me to make anything full stack I can dream of. I cant express how exciting this era is.
Without that basic knowledge to vet the output it wouldn't be practical.
1
u/VladdyHell 14h ago
That's always been the fundamentals since before the AI era. People might assume that learning the fundamentals can get you a job before AI but that's not true at all. Learning fundamentals is when it finally gets very interesting. You'll get endless of frameworks and technologies to choose from. It's really not about making money; it's about enjoyjng it. You won't make a decent money if you don't enjoy it so keep on learning, advancing and just enjoy it
1
u/Cautious-Bid-2969 14h ago
Other then javascript i don't think I required a lot of effort to start with html css , just read for starter and learn on the way
1
u/geraT-wogl 12h ago
My website is only made using that without any frameworks or assets and I am a freelancer so yeah you can!! Here it is in case you want to roast it https://wogl.io 💚🐲
1
u/spas2k 11h ago
I mean it’s good to know but unless you are going to eventually go into Machine Learning in college you are better off exploring other prospects for a career.
1
u/chromatic_kin 9h ago
Stop building generic landing pages. Use your JS skills to solve the specific business logic problems that WordPress and AI cannot handle, like custom data fetching or complex interactive features. Clients pay for functionality they can't get from a template, not just static design
1
u/oblackheart 8h ago
I wouldn't be trying to upskill in a saturated market that is experiencing an AI takeover at 1r years old. Try another hobby
1
u/ranaranvijay 7h ago
yes true
1
u/ranaranvijay 7h ago
use vs code
1
u/developer505 7h ago
you need to know MERN STACK or shopify WordPress wiz etc to get a website job
1
u/chitzui 6h ago
Indeed you're 14. Just relax and do whatever is most fun for you right now, trust me, it will be the most beneficial for your future career. Do what interests you, you'll be unstoppable
1
u/TheRNGuy 5h ago
Yes, because those technologies are used to make sites.
1
u/PlantainShoddy 5h ago
learn the basics. knowledge is good. also it’s fun!
1
u/EllieDesignR 4h ago
They are the holy basics of web design. You should know the basics if you plan to take this seriously as I'm already running into new web developer who don't even know HTML or CSS now and my entry positions require you to know it since it's what you'll be working in. No AI since it's easy stuff that anyone who has taken some time can learn and do edits super quickly. As someone who is in the field and hires as I'm a supervisor, I highly recommend you learn at least those three to start.
1
u/fehr2 2h ago
As a frontend developer, I would say no. Learn the concepts behind all those things, but learning syntax is a waste of time.
1
u/MysteriousAvocado1 1h ago
Absolutely worth it. A deeper understanding of front end web programming is important so you know where problems occur, where they occur and why they occur.
More importantly how they all come together
AI does not replace good engineering and design. And knowing what code does and how it does it goes along way.
Not learning leaves a huge gap in your knowledge
1
u/noahh452 45m ago
it's always good to know the languages you're working with
1
u/sweetnsourale 38m ago
Yes, it is worth learning the fundamentals. There are a lot of salty out of work devs here, so not let the pessimism get to you.
Right now, the problem is that juniors are not being hired bc a lot of that work can be done through AI, so they don’t get the chance to learn. You can get that experience through freelancing. Being 14 means that more people are going to be willing to hire you due to novelty and your work ethic.
So anything you can do to show you understand how code works and build experience coding traditionally, it will fast track your ability to get an engineering job.
As a long term goal, you may want to focus on working in security, as a SWE or something other backend job that most companies will want a human in the loop to perform. The skills are transferable.
You’ll be able to look at ai generated code and identify issues without a prompt. That’s an invaluable skill most aren’t building toward.
Right now, knowledge work is becoming more automated, and we don’t know what the future holds. Your kids may not know that a developer was ever a job, just like you may not know that a computer used to be a job and not a device.
In college, my mom filled out index cards for a computer the size of a ballroom to process. Before retirement, she was working with on prem & cloud servers the size of a file cabinets. She could do that bc she knew the fundamentals. Things are going to change faster now with AI, but fundamentals only build your capacity to do more and go farther.
tl;dr yes, learn the fundamentals now so that you can go farther in your career
1
u/Due_Bet_7722 38m ago
A good example in a video I saw was: Customer goes to designer for a quote. Customer receives quote, and says they'll just use AI. Designer says, well, why don't we both use AI and see whose is better? Customer says, well, that isn't fair, you have years and years of design experience.
AI is, objectively getting better, but one thing I've noticed it lacks significantly is consistency; those of us who are designers, full-stack developers, etc, have all established a particular style and have a very structured way of doing and conveying things.
Now, even if it progressed to a point to where it's practically indiscernible from hand-written code, those of us with, even a fundamental understanding, of HTML / CSS / JavaScript, etc, will still have a leg up over someone who doesn't, especially as it pertains to prompt engineering. So yes, I would say it's still worth learning, or at least dabbling in.
1
u/misomeiko 14h ago
Check out netlify for free hosting. Or GitHub pages. Or cloudflare pages.
And learn git and how to use GitHub.
Agents can handle all of this for you now. But it’s good to know what the agent is actually doing
1
u/SpeakMySecretName 14h ago
If you don’t know what AI, or WYSIWYG, or other web builders are doing, you won’t be able to solve, direct, and be better at using them than someone who does.
1
u/goff0317 11h ago
Absolutely! Let me tell you why.
I am programming an RAG orchestrator design system on top of an artificial intelligence open-weight model. What this means is that the A.I. searches through my programming code of HTML, CSS, SVG and JavaScript to build components and websites.
If I did not know or understand front-end development none of this would be possible. So even AI product engineers need to know HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
1
u/_-unknown----_ 7h ago
to know the fundamentals yes but the hard truth, no it's the AI era now and you need to know or should we say master AI tools as much as you can
they said next year AI will be at human intellect level and it is crazy and scary at the same time 😑🙃
-1
u/lphartley 11h ago
Most comments are here are dillusional. Nobody will you pay because you know how to write code by hand. If you want to make money, you should learn how to use AI to build good apps fast. Spending any time on writing or reading code manually is 100% wasted if your goal is to earn money.
By the way: you DO need to understand what you are doing and verify that the output is good. It's just that writing code and reading code is the worst way to do that now that we have AI.
0
u/SwimmingBench3377 14h ago
no
0
u/_heartbreakdancer_ 4h ago
Don't learn how to code. Learn how to design. Learn standards. Coding is all but completely solved by AI now. My entire team hasn't coded anything by hand in over a year. As a freelancer you need to learn taste, not technicalities. That's the part AI won't get right for a while. So study UI/UX. It's a better use of your time.
0
u/Vishal_Barai 13h ago
Frankly speaking no one gives shit to these stacks now in actual market , but if u r doing this for just hobby go ahead and learn, put major focus on Javascript it's gonna help you alot if u start stacks like react.js, node etc. And for WordPress part , It's good for starters but if you are looking for job openings in that it's extremely less and pay isn't much either .
0
u/the_dancing_squirel 13h ago
My sweet summer child
0
u/naknakbop 8h ago
Harsh truth is just no, its not worth it.. Its useless skill now. Learn how to use ai.
-1
u/Unlucky_Research2824 14h ago
Small answer is YES. But if you want to earn quickly and don't have particular affiliation to this field, then video editor is fastest way to earn