Learning Web Development in 2021
Why? Everyone needs a website/web app/web service - So a great decision, It's simply fun to work as a web developer, people see your work. Probably anyone may love to work as a web developer for life.
How? You need to understand how the web work. Not a single technology to chose, You can start with the front end (stuff user would see) or backend (logic and data to support your frontend).
Frontend Basics
HTML (core language which tells your browser what to show)
CSS (Styles your HTML)
Javascript (adds interactivity)
Backend Basics
To talk to a database and generate dynamic HTML, you need to run code on the server. Probably you need a language similar to what you already know -- NodeJS (you write JS code here as well). NodeJS helps you writing logic on the server. You can learn a query language & database like Mongo (which helps you still write code Javascript style to interact with it )
Web development trends 2021
Lots of option to master the basics of web development. The business will need to move to web apps or many more apps than before and web developers can come to their rescue. Keep in mind neither business nor user care about what technology you are using. They want a great user experience. So go ahead develop the things in vanilla JS, CSS or HTML, who cares.
Definitely, developer experience is what you chose and you would prefer frameworks or libraries like Angular and React.
These libraries take care of the pain of giving better user and developer experience. Don't over-complicate the things, if you still think server-side rendering helps, do that.
What about them who already know all of these?
Should we start learning AI, Data science, dev ops and blah blah? Definitely, if that helps you or your team, but there is a lot to learn in web development and master it than moving away from what you love to do already.
Probably master the frontend or backend whichever you feel you haven't worked much in recent times. Maybe some new libraries (svelte, native react for web, vue), VSCode extensions, graphql or react query.
Would love to hear your suggestions. Wish you all happy new year 2021. Happy Hacking!