Learn From Willma: How To Build Your Career Path In Web Development And Game Development

Do you observe things around you and constantly come up with new ways to make them better?

Do you often think: “If I had an app for this problem, it would have been solved?” 

Also, do you put all your effort into it and finally make such a web application to make your everyday life easier?

Well, that’s exactly what Willma does!

He didn’t sit and wait for a career to happen. On the contrary, he designed his own website: https://willma.me/.

Besides personal website creation, he started building his technical skill set, making some really cool stuff, and learning new things in game development.

Let’s hear all about it!

Who Is Willma?

We all know that coding is nowadays an essential skill. It is used for the creation of apps, web development, game development, and more. Moreover, it is also a good way to advance your career since the market potential is heating up. For many people, learning how to code has become a necessity. One of them is Willma.

So, Willma (William Ma) is a student and a full stack developer, a junior at The Webb Schools in California, and is based in Hong Kong. Over the years, he learned a lot in both game development and web development areas. Willma is currently learning web development with the MERN stack, a Javascript Stack used for easier deployment of full-stack web applications. Namely, it comprises 4 technologies: MongoDb, Express, React, and Node.js. Additionally, each of these 4 cutting-edge technologies provides an end-to-end framework for the developers to work within it and plays its own role in the development. It is designed to make the development process faster, smoother, and easier.

He is fluent in English and on a conversational level in both Mandarin and Cantonese.

• In the set of his technical skills there are both top frontend and backend languages.

Moreover, as it can be seen in his portfolio, William created Tech Black, an e-commerce store, a game called Flappy Bird, and a web app called NextBus that shows the estimated time of arrival of buses in Hong Kong!

Read more: Why You Should Invest Your Time In Online Presence As A Student

How To Become Great At Web And Game Development?

There’s no better time like the present to be in web and game development. It offers tremendous career potential, security, and loads of opportunities. 

To further your goals and become a full-stack developer like Willma, familiarize yourself with both front-end and back-end web development concepts. The first one is a customer-facing part. And the second one, is responsible for the internal software, so a full-stack developer is capable of addressing both sides.

• Prepare yourself to work with a website from scratch to the final launch.
• Be ready to work with user interface teams.
• Identify all the skills you need to improve.
• Be aware that a full stack developer’s education is never really complete.
• Establish a concrete timeline for educating yourself in this field.
• Begin building your portfolio.
• Start job hunting.
• Continually practice on online platforms and refresh your coding skills.
• You should know how to verbalize and explain your thinking processes.
• Work on your soft skills.

Knowledge And Skills Needed For Game Development And Web Development

Speaking of game development, coding is simply not enough. Problem-solving aptitude and creativity with a flair for design are what it takes to create a great game. What is more, you have to be a gamer and truly love to play. Have patience when it comes to technical glitches or bugs. Keep yourself updated with the gaming industry and stay abreast of what is happening with competitors. 

You also need to understand human psychology in order to retain your players’ attention and constantly look for some amazing ideas from parts of existing games. This is how your game will click with the audience. As you can see, not all of the skills needed are IT-related.

Career In Web Development

These are the valuable experiences and some important skills to bring to the table in order to build your career path in web development:

• Anchor your knowledge in software design, video graphics, and hardware. Learn how to find answers, not how to know the answer to every question. Today’s software development is very wide, varied, and complex, so you cannot get deep knowledge easily. And if you go deep, you can’t stay there. So it is much better to pick a narrow area and go deep into it.

• Problem-solving is a key part of the web app developer’s job. Take what is bothering you in your everyday life and try to fix it by making a web app for it. This is the best advice on how to start with something you are familiar with – this is where creativity and problem-solving are born. Be innovative, forward-thinking, and savvy.

• Show your passion for design. As graphics and user experience play a huge role in both game development and web development, find some free/paid online courses in graphic design where you will get a solid understanding of basics and learn how to use color, contrast, balance, composition, proportion, and hierarchy effectively.

• Think about small businesses and their pain points. There are many companies’ sectors where web development can provide solutions. Those solutions can be implemented in various fields of business – scheduling, task and project management, communication, accounting, collaboration, integration software, marketing automation, help desk, invoicing, file storage, time tracking, supply chain, remote working, human resources, etc.

All The Great Apps Evolved From Problem-Solving

Now we have Uber for transporting, Facebook for communicating, and Quora for getting advice with both personal and community problems, but once they all started with an issue that needed to be solved.

If you’re starting out with web development or game development, begin with something that would make your life easier. All the great web services and apps were developed from real-life problems – for instance, from finding the name of the song you are listening to, switching the light off automatically when you leave your home, mapping the exact location you are searching for, and finding easier ways to communicate in a group, to getting a date.

His Web And Game Development Works

Here is one problem Willma detected and found the solution to, and we are sure you can relate, too. Have you ever listened to music with your friends, and they all started to throw you dozens of songs they would like to hear? Well, this app Willma created allows users to add songs to the ‘communal playlist’ themselves. 

GroupDJ is designed to be projected on a TV, and guests can click on the link or scan the QR code to join the session so they can add songs to a queue that is played.

In Conclusion

Today, web apps can respond to any challenge – personal, business, or social. Web apps have been extremely successful in streamlining business processes and helping us to overcome many day-to-day problems efficiently. 

So, find your own niche, be it health, data analytics, booking, communication, inventory, etc. and think about what needs to be improved in it.

If you can imagine yourself in web development and game development, explore the industry, be prepared to study long hours, test your work, have plenty of curiosity, and a lot of patience.

Willma, hope you are happy with our .ME domain services! Thank you for being a valued .MEr!