I've been developing my own websites for over 20 years, and doing the odd website work for a few clients lately, and so I keep up with that scene as best as I can.

The amount of stuff you need to know to be a solo web developer in 2021 is kind of mind boggling though, and I concentrate mostly on the design side, along with rudimentary things like HTML, PHP, CSS, and some Javascript.

I aspire to be able to be better at Javascript, and I'd like to learn Ajax properly someday. And get good at making things with three.js.

I like that we can have websites that do all this stuff - it's crazy compared to the rinky-dink sites I learned how to make back in the Geocities days. But I also sort of lament how complicated everything is, too.

I don't want to compile a website before deploying it. I don't want to have to worry about SEO, and compromise (or worse, homogenize) my designs because Google wants things to be a certain way. I don't want to add special code to my websites so Facebook understands the content flow better.

I hate that this stuff is common. It makes the web feel less like a tool for free expression. But if you don't learn it, and don't do it, others will - and then you won't get work.