aleo

Hey HN, i need your help with getting back on track with programming after 8 year break.

I was a (mostly frontend) web developer until 2009 and developing websites was pretty simple then: i wrote some html, css, javascript and some php or python on the backend. I haven't done any programming since (except i went through a couple of clojure books for fun). I'm 30 years old with no degree.

I'm trying to get back into real-world web development and things have changed a lot, there's so much choice today. I feel like a newbie again. I really need help choosing what technologies to learn to get up to speed with modern web dev and start making a living out of it. Is there a website that lists the most in-demand skills for a web developer today?

For the last couple of week I've been learning React, Bootstrap, these seem to be pretty popular choices for frontend. I like React, can't wait to build something meaningful with it. What other frontend skills do I need to learn? Today I discovered d3.js and I absolutely love it - that would be like a dream job to visualize data in creative ways :) I've been reading about other technologies but there's so much of them that my head is spinning.

What are the good choices at the backend, looks like mostly node.js and express in demand. Should I skip backend altogether and focus 100% on the frontend for now?

What databases are the most popular? Do people still use mysql?

Deployment also changed a lot, there's AWS, Google cloud, Heroku, Docker to name a few.

I've been bidding on freelancing sites but no one replies, which is understandable since I have no recent work experience. How should I go about getting my first client? Do some free work? Make some demo websites to put in my portfolio? What do you think?

Could you please point me in the right direction how should I get started with audio programming?

I'm a self-taught web developer without college degree. I know PHP, Python, and a little Scheme. I'm not a very good programmer to be honest.

But recently I became interested in creating audio apps for iphone, particularly I'm interested in virtual instruments, synthesizers and such. I use dozens of audio apps on my iphone all the time, so I thought why not try creating one?

Well, I purchased couple of books on audio programming but they are very difficult right from the start. Core Audio is also very complex. And they use C or C++ which are very foreign to me. As far as I understand this is a difficult field in general, so it requires low level programming, math and all these advanced topics.

I was wondering if it's possible to learn all these things by myself? For the last month I've been studying some math at Khan academy, and I also got Kernighan and Ritchie book on C, but I feel like there's very little progress and it gets harder and harder (currently learning about pointers and memory for the first time).

I'm really looking for some sort of roadmap, so if anyone could recommend more gentle approach to audio programming, or some books for very beginners, or provide some guidance in this field I'd really, really appreciate it.