[justanotherbody]

For me it was getting enough experience with the various tools and tooling to learn the right tool for each job.

I started around '08 on a Django-based stack with really only university courses and prior Python programming experience. I was very active reading about the tech stacks which helped substantially.

When building mostly static content, I relied heavily on templating. When it came time to add interactivity, jQuery was right there waiting for me. When more complex behaviors were needed, I had to figure out how to write actual javascript rather than string callbacks together. Then learning to manage dependencies and assets became necessary, ... and so on.

A mentor would have been an enormous benefit. I was very lucky in that I got a wide berth to work in, and much opportunity for greenfield work.