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That depends. Are you asking as a potential investor / manager, or as a technician?As an appliance repair business owner:It’s very difficult to find, train and deploy “workers” who will represent your company the way an owner would desire. Finding someone who would be welcome in your customer’s homes, who exudes trust and honesty, who treats your customers with the highest degree of courtesy, and exhibits the highest levels of technical competence is next to impossible. If you’ve never done in-home appliance repair yourself, you’ll have little to offer a qualified technician. Soon they’ll be doing side jobs off the books using your tools, your truck and your spare parts. Inventory will become the bane of your existence. If you hire a technician with even the tiniest amount of ambition, you’ll be training his replacement soon. Sears (a.k.a. A&E) can’t train new technicians fast enough. They call me regularly to ask if I want to work for half of what I earn now. All the back-end (office) staff, equipment, software, vehicles, insurance, inventory control and other overhead means the margins are slim. The hourly rate isn’t any better than most factory jobs. A good welder or CNC operator earns more. Working for someone else while they keep most of the profits, well, let’s just say that’s not for me.As a technician:Appliance repair is not for everyone. You’ll need to be technically competent, have good detective skills (not all problems are with the machine), have excellent communication skills, be personable, be a halfway decent businessman, and the possess highest levels of integrity.Your working conditions are often less than ideal. Machines that didn’t drain will be disgusting and smelly. Behind the stove is a place no one ever cleans. Dryers are dusty and basements are damp. Chipmunks will sometimes get stuck in the blower wheel of a dryer. Hoarders isn’t just a T.V. show. People actually live like that. You’ll see dirty laundry piled four feet high and cat litter boxes that haven’t been cleaned in six months. You’ll hear kids crying and witness parents screaming at them to shut up. Occasionally you’ll see evidence of mice or insects. Some homes are so filthy you will refuse to enter. You’ll need to be straightforward, diplomatic, understanding and non-judgemental as you delicately explain why you cannot repair the customer’s grease-covered stove with roaches on the circuit board.These are worst case scenarios, but I see one or more of them every month. If that’s not for you, look for another profession.The job itself is awesome. I get to meet 3–4 new customers every day. I’m on a first-name basis with many of my repeat customers. I can recognize their voices on the phone and I can drive to their house without consulting a map. When I’m at the grocery store, shoppers will stop and thank me again for fixing their dishwashers.I get to solve problems every day. Sometimes it’s figuring out why a machine is doing this strange thing you’ve never seen before. Sometimes the dishwasher doesn’t run because the customer’s brother turned off the power while looking for the light switch. Sometimes your customer is only available on Thursday evenings between 4:00 and 5:00PM and they live 30 minutes away. Sometimes the dryer vent pipe refuses to be reconnected to the back of the dryer.You’ll spend half your day driving from one house to the next, or on a detour to the parts supply store. You’ll know the city better than any taxi driver. You’ll have hours and hours to practice your defensive driving skills. You’ll learn which intersections to avoid at certain times of day. You’ll be the first to learn when a road is under construction. A healthy podcast lineup will become your university.If you’re an independent contractor, the pay is pretty good. (File your LLC paperwork, get liability insurance, a separate bank account and an accountant before your first job! I mean it!!) I don’t know of any other profession not requiring a college degree where you can earn six figures working for yourself. I take time off when I want, and I don’t work crazy long hours. (Of course you could if your family life allows it.) You need to build and maintain a website, stay active on social media, buy tools, a van, basic truck stock parts, business cards and get lettering on your vehicle.I started with three years experience at Sears, an old Chevy Blazer, a Craigslist ad and a generic receipt pad from Office Depot. I bought a toolbox and $200 worth of tools on my credit card, I built my first website myself and I never looked back. Eight years later, I have a dedicated work vehicle with a full wrap, a few thousand dollars worth of spare parts, sealed system tools, a professionally built website with online service request form and paperless billing, a full-time service manager to answer the phone and schedule jobs, and the best customer reviews in Milwaukee. Last year I trained another independent contractor. Rather than hiring a technician, I trained another small business owner who will take care of his customers, his truck and his tools as well as I take care of mine.My friend’s daughter once said, “You only need two things to fix anything: Confidence and Persistence!” Fixing stuff is easy. All the rest is the hard part.

I would suggest building a taxi booking stub app. Sounds weird but trust me it will teach you more than top 5 web-dev suggestions.Sit down and right all the elements you would want to implement to make it a completely working app. When I did it, I found these:A login : DatabaseA Graphical interface : UI ElementsAPI handling : Request and traffic handlingStatistics : Keep a record of everythingHosting : Try hosting this app!Login : For any application which involves users, a login is must to ensure the identity of the user. There are a lot of software that does the job, MongoDB, Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle. For using them you need to setup the server so you might need, Node.js, Flask, Django, Ruby.Graphical Interface : UI places a very important role in completeness of a web app. Currently one of the best design systems is Material Design(1.0, although 2.0 is out). In this application, maps is crucial. Even if Google does the map rendering for you, building custom design is challenging. Let’s say like tracking the driver, making animations of current location. Having that said, adding elements like from-to location in innovative place, picking locations, form elements, overall view, isn't all that easy. So having a nice practice you have would make you sufficient enough of most web-apps. Tips: Bootstrap, Materializecss, or build custom.API handling : Specifically in this app, managing your requests and allocating a driver for each user you be challenging. But you can always do basic implantation. Creating api request based on the user request would be fun to implement and later render it on map. Tips : use REST and SOUP api platform.Statistics : Create fake database of users and try displaying them in the form of chart in different and innovative ways. Also try analyzing, the data! Use chart api, google charts, chart.js, plotly.Hosting : This is something very exciting. Until now, you have been doing it on local machine. Once the stub is ready, make it public and ask your friends and family to test it! You will come across few weird things, but you will eventually start realizing how to fix all of them.Once you are done with this application, you will start appreciating yourself with amount of knowledge you have gained.So start building your application and have fun!

Classic definitions: A programmer does one thing. A developer does the whole thing. A true developer is full stack by default.A developer is concerned with the SDLC. Software Development Life Cycle. That cycle has 6 parts. Requirements, Design, Code, Test, Deployment, and Maintenance. You are good when you can do each part well.Requirements = What is the overall business problem we are trying to solve?Design = What does the solution look like?Code = Build it or revise it.Test = Make sure it solves the problem and not introduce problems.Deploy = Put it where people can get it, run it, and use it when they need to.Maintain = New ideas about the solution. Go back to step 1.You cannot do SDLC or what is now called Full Stack without context. Software does not emerge without purpose. Learning development is different than learning programming. Development is a broader skill that is part technical and part mapping out a solution in the context of an environment (social, business, industry, department level, enterprise, etc). Your first step in learning will require a sample project.A great sample project is 3 page product search. The question is, how do I show someone the product they want to see? Page 1 is a search box. Page 2 is the list of results from the search. Page 3 is the detail page. This is in many development text books. Your challenge is to go through the classic 6-step process. Why are you building it? What will the total solution look like on paper? Creating the solution, testing it, and moving it from the place where you built it to somewhere others can try it out and give feedback. Maintain it by keeping the solution fresh to changing circumstances.The mindset just outlined goes hand-in-hand with using technologies in a full stack way. There is a 3-part harmony in the conventional design of computer systems. Classically called the 3-tier architecture you have data, application processing, and presentation. Other names exist for those, I am being extremely general. Full stack means you understand this relationship. You do from the question, but there is one problem.Over doing the concept. It is as simple as where is the data going to be; how is that data going to be shown; and what is the process in between that will glue it all together? It is the difference between practical and relevant to the business customer versus distant from the core concepts and distant from the true goal which is to solve problems in an effective way.Step 1. Learn SQL, data structures, and information architecture. Data is the foundation for the whole effort.Data begins with organization. Structuring information in a complete and efficient way. You do not want to study a database, that comes later. You want to study SQL, data structures, and information architecture. Those are the things that make your use of databases more productive. There is much more to learn but how to query data, organize it, and represent the business as data are the skills you can apply to all databases whether they are files or relational data management systems.Step 2. Learn Go, procedural programming, functional decomposition so you can just code. Code Complete is a book with great information about this.You have to take that data and process it in a form that will make its way to the presentation. You will get data in from the presentation and adapt it for input into the persistent data area. In the beginning, do not make it more complicated than that. Data in and data out. Algorithms will not help you yet. You will learn that later. The starting point is the right programming method. The baseline paradigm for most languages is procedural programming. That starts with functional decomposition. Understand functional decomposition, how to map things you need to do into functions and you will have the most fundamental knowledge that applies to most programming languages. You can add objects, components, and complexity analysis later but first you need to code direct and to the point. Learning Go will get you there faster.Step 3. Learn raw JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and AJAX. Use those functional decomposition skills on the client to quickly get data on the screen and back into the database.Learn what HTML markup is, what HTML forms are, and how to use CSS to make the appearance nice on the eyes. Dan Cederholm has some of the best info on doing the appearance part in a straightforward way. With JavaScript you are learning the logic of validating a form, sending/receiving AJAX requests, and revising the HTML through a Document Object Model. You will spend a lot of time here.That is full stack.With the core fundamentals in hand, your next step is to build on them. That is when you introduce the other things on your list. Technology wise, most things are going to fit in this model. Knowledge of specific technologies can go way up and way down in value, but the fundamental concepts equip you to apply whatever comes along in a way that connects with your audience.Time: If you focus, have the right learning materials, you can learn this process in about a month or two. You have to start it and stick with it. Be patient but steady. You are learning to understand the basic process for most of software development.You will be proficient and productive by 6-months. Know that most people do not become really good until about 5 years of quality experience. In less than a year you will be hired. Regardless of time spent, once you have the basic process down cold keep pushing to advance further.Never forget your goal is to deliver value.Know the customer's problem (even if that customer is you); design the solution, build it and get it to working fashion as soon as possible. The sooner they have it, the sooner you can get it into the right shape. The reason you are a continuous learner is so you grow into the type of person who delivers quality more naturally. It comes with time and cannot be forced. Do not be ashamed of writing code that is not a pristine example. Plan and act on the plan to improve while you stay focused on delivering with what you know. The same mindset you had in learning the process in the beginning that brought you this far.Advancement: By whatever route you go, make sure to continually build your skills, practice the process, and acquire education to broaden your capacity. Doing so allows you to deliver more value in a better way. Raise your communication skills. Put people first. You master the process the more you practice it.You are always running towards your future. Take the time to explore many other topics in computers. People such as Shriram Krishnamurthi and Thomas Cormen and others have great insights to share in their published work. Just keep learning for its own sake because you are creating unique value within yourself that will be reflected in the work you do.Computers, A Propositional Construct