[kevinsimper]

I would be easy to give you a lot of references to things you could go and read, but the real question is what do you want to archive? Programming is only a means to an end, and you can do everything with the tools you already know such as PHP, HTML & CSS.

React.js or the meta-level behind it, virtual DOM, has no doubt improved my front-end skills 10-fold and together with Node.js where I can render all the things in the backend and use the same code, but all that doesn't really matter.

What are you doing currently? Maybe I can help you get started? What are your interests?

[codechoir]

Hey, thank you for your answer. Currently I'm doing a lot of scientific computing in Python and R. I would love to get started with some smaller (personal) web-projects because I always really enjoyed developing for the web.

Given my background I thought about looking at Laravel more closely, however I would also love to understand the whole JS/Node/X.js hype/world. As it looks, we have moved towards an infrastructure that heavily relies on backend APIs.

[kevinsimper]

I would suggest you make a simple blog/twitter with node.js and mongo, that would take you a couple of hours and you will have something quick to show!

If you want, you are very welcome to reach me on skype "kevinsimper"!