I was mentoring a friend who was learning frontend and he really just wasn't enjoying it the way I did when I went through that process. We started looking at t

I was mentoring a friend who was learning frontend and he really just wasn't enjoying it the way I did when I went through that process. We started looking at the backend and it turned out his inclination was really more towards DevOps and that's what he got excited about. It's hard to learn something in your own time if you're not feeling excited or motivated about it. For myself, I started with HTML and CSS, and had a lot of fun with that. Then when I decided it was time to learn JS, I hit a brick wall. I almost quit then and there thinking programming was not for me. But I was also determined to do something different with my life than I was currently doing. So I switched gears and jumped into Ruby on Rails. Ruby really clicked with me in a way that JS did not, perhaps because it was somewhat more readable and less syntax getting in my way. I got into it enough that I signed up for an online bootcamp. That's a whole different story but the short of it is I learned Ruby on Rails and that enabled me to get a job at some point soonish thereafter. And you know what? In the end I came back to Javascript and I actually enjoy working in the frontend (with typescript mostly now) more than the backend side of things. I think maybe Ruby taught me how to rewire my brain for programming and then Javascript felt a lot more friendlier than it had previously. It's a lot of the same paradigms, just re-wrapped in different syntax. I guess, my point is, try to start somewhere, but don't be afraid of exploring. There's no right answer for all of us. Html/CSS/JS is a good starting point. Firebase or AWS Amplify is a good augment to that although I'd try just purely static sites with maybe some serverless functions sprinkled in if needed. Netlify Functions are an easier entrypoint into that, and I believe they are just AWS Lambda's underneath: https://www.netlify.com/products/functions/ https://www.netlify.com/products/functions/ Try to find your niche and focus down on what gets you excited. I dove into some obscure frameworks and languages at times that might have seemed ill-advised to focus on during that stage in my career. Some of these paid off by becoming popular but even when they didn't, I learned a ton.