It takes a tremendous amount of time to be good at it quickly.
Not everyone can code, in fact after 35 years of development, maybe 3 or 4 percent could do it and complete a project.
Of that maybe half would want to do it.
Contrary to what you read, developing in C#, C++, Swift, Objective C, and C takes at least a year to become really proficient. Python, Java, Javascript take less than that. Once you know one of them well, the others fall in place quicker.
These new low-code / no-code tools take a good while too and a longer time if it’s you first exposure to programming .
That first year you’re going to be bugging the shit out of the engineers and experienced folks.
If you are the kind of person who likes to go to meetings you had best find something else to do. If you like to stay inside your comfort zone, that too is a good reason to find something else to do.
Learning to code isn’t enough
Freelance WordPress developers can charge $50-75/hr and many are mostly self taught and end their self teaching by attending coding bootcamp.
A Picasso is worth millions, so why isn’t everybody painting pictures?
In general, people don’t get hired just to code anymore. You are expected to do business analysis and requirements and be a Subject-Matter Expert, the coding is more and more a smaller part of the job.
In the 90’s I could have described myself as a “full stack” web developer - design the DB, write queries, do the backend code to generate dynamic HTML/Javascript, Java applets, and Photoshopped graphics.
Now there’s endless Javascript frameworks for everything...plus a few million more developers to compete with. I moved into embedded systems and didn’t learn any of these frameworks. Not that I’d really want to go back to doing that. Although AI and AWS applications have an appeal.
There are a lot of moving parts to development, and different people have different strengths and weaknesses in relation to those parts.
Lots of great coders don’t understand the business process they’re trying to automate/replicate and others can’t design a UI to save their lives.
OTOH, there are some great designers who can’t write the code to build it into reality.
Despite all that, lately I’ve been seeing jobs for “system administrators”, where when you read the requirements, actually want a pretty sophisticated combination of developer and database designer. Weird how most of IT is hyper-specializing, but then wanting employees who have expertise in multiple disciplines. Of course, they’re not paying for that sort of expertise...
Anyone that can think logically can learn to code in a year or less. To learn how to build a system like a website with sql backend and utilize a virtualization stack to dynamically scale at load takes years of full time work to develop. Coder != Developer != Architect. No shortcuts.
Creating a web page should be easy but it is cumbersome to do so. You now need to know html and css and grid and flexbox and other programming to import data on the fly and design for desktop screens and cell phones.
I can only create a basic page. The next step is content that will attract people that can make you money. Look at Youtube or Tik Tok creators. Just coming up with content is hard. They do not create the website, just upload to one.
There are programs that help but still just a simple layout that will fit a large monitor and a cell phone screen is irritating. When you view the page source of some sites they are looking like gibberish due to using Bootstrap. Stay away from that and go simple.
Basic layout using Grid - right click and choose to View page source.
https://davidswebsite.com/webhelp/2col_4row_generic.html
How to center images and text
https://davidswebsite.com/webhelp/center_image_text.html
One of the best programs is HtmlPad 2022 Editor https://www.htmlpad.net
A one time payment of $39.95 unlike the less capable Dreamweaver that costs $21 a month every month! HtmlPad has preview and you you can click on a toolbar button to also view in a web browser to verify.
Here is a nice GRID layout site. Copy and paste the result into HTMLPad and modify from there.
CSS Grid Layout generator
https://vue-grid-generator.netlify.app/
W3 Schools
https://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp