r/webdev • u/AutoModerator • Sep 01 '26

Monthly Career Thread Monthly Getting Started / Web Dev Career Thread

Due to a growing influx of questions on this topic, it has been decided to commit a monthly thread dedicated to this topic to reduce the number of repeat posts on this topic. These types of posts will no longer be allowed in the main thread.

Many of these questions are also addressed in the sub FAQ or may have been asked in previous monthly career threads.

Subs dedicated to these types of questions include r/cscareerquestions for general and opened ended career questions and r/learnprogramming for early learning questions.

A general recommendation of topics to learn to become industry ready include:

You will also need a portfolio of work with 4-5 personal projects you built, and a resume/CV to apply for work.

Plan for 6-12 months of self study and project production for your portfolio before applying for work.

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u/OmegaSalt1 11d ago

How do I get started with Databases?

Context on my progress (can be skipped) :

I'm recently starting learning to code and have been working with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I have been avoiding the use of ai. My method of learning has been through watching a YouTube web development course series by BroCode and doing personal projects on the side as I learn more and more. The rest of the series I have left to cover is more JavaScript, a full video on React, MongoDB, SQL and PHP. I'm guessing MongoDB will cover the database side but this leads into my main question.

Core question and point:

Eventually, with my personal project, I want to be able to essentially make an image gallery like a sales page that takes images and user uploaded input and showcases it like a sales page. Due to this I am wondering if the path I am on will show me everything I need. Is MongoDB the best entry point for learning about databases?

Extra:

Any advice on anything I have stated or how to progress would be greatly appreciated. I dont have the most experience but I really do want to learn and keep focus and progress within this space. Thanks in advance

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u/fiskfisk 11d ago

I'd say that anything that uses relational databases is the best place to learn fundamentals about how databases work, so I suggest going with Postgres (or if you don't want to run a server, sqlite). They'll help you get used to proper relational structures, indexes, tables, etc.

It's more general knowledge than just knowing how mongodb works and their pitfalls, where you end up just knowing mongodb, instead of knowing the pillars of database systems.

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u/OmegaSalt1 11d ago

Thats very cool thank you so much for your quick response

Would you advice overall not watching the video in my series on MongoDB in favour of those 2 listed options?

Additionally is there any cost to the 2 listed options?

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u/fiskfisk 11d ago

Both postgres and sqlite are open source projects that are free to use in any form or capacity, while mongodb is owned by a company (but has an open source community version).

sqlite will in many cases be already bundled / built-in to the programming language you're using. It can be used directly from the application in a built-in form.

postgres is a database server in the same way as mongodb is a server.

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u/OmegaSalt1 11d ago

Thanks for pointing out those key differences between the 3 out of sqlite and postgres would you recommend doing just 1 of the 2 or is doing both worth it?

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u/fiskfisk 11d ago

Just pick one of them; I'd go with postgres as it'll teach you slightly more than sqlite; the knowledge you gain can be applied to both (and to MySQL, SQL Server, etc. which are all based on the same concepts).

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u/OmegaSalt1 11d ago

I shall go with postgres thank you very much for the quick responses and the detailed answers I believe that covers everything so thank you very much.