Web Developer Career 1

[BigCatMCS]

I know I've posted many times before concerning my career, but please read the following:

Just a couple of questions. I am a supervisor at Honda in mainframe operations. My forte is MVS, but I want to switch careers and become a web developer. I know HTML, JavaScript, SQL, and a little bit of Visual Basic. How do I switch from being a mainframe supervisor to a web developer? In other words, what steps should I take, or things I should learn to become one. I don't have the time to go back to school since I have a family and my offshift hours will not permit it, so I'm kind of stuck. Do you think one can realistically learn everything on his or her own? Also, what is the entry level-pay of a web developer? One more thing...what is the difference between a web developer and web master (if any). Thank you in advance for answering these questions for me.

 

[p27br]

you could start having a look her :

http://www.w3schools.com/

 

[screwloose]

A Web developer is doing the development on the backend, connecting to databases, etc. A Web Master is concerned with the administration of the web environment, and knows Apache and Java App Server configurations, etc., and also may do some content work, but to me is more the administrator.

What you will need to know to become a Web developer is J2EE, WebSphere (and/or Tomcat, BEA, etc.), relational databases, a Web scripting language like PHP or Perl, Apache (or iPlanet or another Web Server), a graphics application like Photoshop or Gimp. It is assumed that you would already know HTML which is, of course, required. You may also want to add in CSS and XML would be helpful, too.

This link will give you salaries for various careers at different levels:

http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layoutscripts/swzl_newsearch.asp

 

[philote]

I think salary.com was giving salaries much to high for my area. If not then I really really need to get the web development/webmaster job I recently applied for.

I would say to look at job postings for the type of position you want and see what those companies require so you have a better idea of what skills you need. You can probably learn much of this stuff on your own if you have the time. Pick up a few books, set up your own web server or buy some web hosting to practice on, and use the internet for research.

 

[Terpsfan]

In addition to classes and studying I think it would be a very good idea to create some web applications and then run them on a live web server with actual users accessing the site. Otherwise you are developing a test tube environment. You would probably want to start out simple.

Two of the biggest talents to have as a developer are the ability to scale an application to fit the number of users and to troubleshoot in a live environment.

 

[Terpsfan]

I would also add that you should have a good knowledge of XML. It's used quite a bit now for data access and exchanging data between different architectures.

 

[cyclegeek]

Step one: Right off the bat start calling yourself a web developer.

At parties tell people you work for Honda AND have a side business as a web developer.

Step two: After con[ning]vincing someone to give you work, hit Tek-Tips, ProgrammersParadise, ExpertsExchange, etc. to get the (FREE) help you need to fake your way through a project. This is how all successful, profession web developers operate - I should know because I'm a web developer (snort, guffaw, HA

http://WWW).

Sorry, it's late and I'm punchy.

In all seriousness, I agree with Omega36. Grab a little plot on the 'ol net and set up shop with yo' own site. Think of some ideas and whomp up some applications. Get familiar with the basics (html, javascript, asp etc). Move on to working with databases. Oracle costs money but you might be able to 'find' a copy of SQLServer to play with (winkwink, nodnod, coughcough). Also get set up with MySql. It seems like a lot of successful companies use MySql just for the cost savings.

Offer to do some work at the 'Family and Friends' rate, or get connected with some local charities that already have pre-existing sites or web applications. There's pros and cons to working on pre-existing stuff but it can be a good way to get started.

Learn from multiple avenues, as in, buy and diligently go thru some books. Cruise the forums and try to find answers to other peoples' questions. Try and establish 'working' relationships with people you know who are already in the biz. I have a friend who basically gave me a client because he was too busy with another project.

Oh, and it couldn't hurt to be familiar with some graphics programs like Adobe's PhotoShop and Illustrator and Macromedia's Flash.

In general it seems like a basic dividing line among web developers is one that separates graphics oriented folks from data and logic oriented folks. There are the guys that create the cool animation and rotating graphics, and the guys who build the asp and xml backend that actually serves up the data. Both are really important.

By the way - does anyone know how to make graphics randomly rotate on a web site - just curious.

Cheers,
cyclegeek

 

[alexhu]

Oracle costs money but you might "

Oracle can be downloaded for free as long as you are using it for development - use it in production and then larry wants his $$$$$$$$$

Alex

 

[philote]

I'm trying to get into web development myself so I'll share my experiences. I started almost two years ago by setting up RedHat Linux on an old computer with Apache. After making my static web site I started playing around with Perl and added a few simple scripts to make it more dynamic. Having a wife, kid, and full-time job I had little free time to work on this stuff but I tinkered when I could. About a year ago I got a job as an IT Admin and now have the opportunity to create from scratch our web site and intranet. I've written several applications to help various departments and its kept me busy between other projects. We didn't have a budget for the web sites so I just set up an old computer with Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl and started trudging through it. I've had to rewrite many of the web apps I wrote early on because the coding was hideous and not very maintainable, but it's been quite a learning experience. Maybe you could see if the opportunity is there to do some projects like this in your current position.

My next step is to rework my personal web site into something I'd like to show off instead of the menagerie of half-completed experiments it is now. Then I'd like to find someone who I can create a site for, either for free or cheap. This way I can build my portfolio of sites I've created. I've also applied for a few webmaster/web developer positions but with my limited experience I haven't even had any interviews yet. Also, it seems there are many companies that use ASP and IIS, which I haven't had the opportunity (or desire) to deal with yet.

I hope this helps in some way and I too am open to suggestions on how to proceed in my career in web development.

 

[jrbarnett]

I have never worked as a professional web developer, but have done a lot of work with HTML and XHTML.

I started off learning plain HTML back in about 1995 before major applications had gone web mad, and wrote a very small app to take a .HTM file and remove the HTML tags, resulting in a plain text output file.
I designed a basic website in 1999, started off with a web development package but then hand tweaked the generated HTML code. During this time I was working as an analyst/programmer and was working on the company intranet and documentation, as well as developing an ASP based web interface, all developed with nothing more difficult than Notepad, documents on the web and looking in "HTML 4 Unleashed" which I picked up in a remaindered bookshop close to me for £2.99, it has proven to be one of my better computer book investments and still sits on my bookshelf and is referred to frequently.

Over the next few years I do some website design and management as part of other work, but really nothing much. I do however write an Access addin that writes information out to plain HTML, thus still improving my raw knowledge.

Step forward October 2003 and my existing site was looking a little tired, no up to date technologies such as CSS and Javascript and I found my code didn't validate properly. I was unemployed so had time on my hands to do it and after asking here if a good website is useful for those looking for work as a marketing tool and receiving a "you can't really go wrong" response, decided to do it. (The thread is in a member moderated forum, so it is not appropriate to link to it here).

I looked at rewriting my site as is, but in the end decided to redo it from scratch, again hand editing with nothing more complex than Notepad.
I found a site called Open Source Web Design which has plenty of tried and tested quality HTML and XHTML templates available for free use. After a lot of looking around, I picked one that looked good, worked in a wide range of browsers and looked professional and modern.
I started with this template and edited it to fit my requirements and transferred the content of the existing site over to it and put up a test version, asking friends/aquaintances for comments, which were generally positive, although a few chances resulted because of this.
I tweaked the code to validate with two separate validators (W3C and CSE HTML Validator Lite 3.5) as well as testing it with the accessibility checkers and validating the external CSS files and including appropriate code for screen reader accessibility.
I chose to go live late last year (although I have tweaked a little since then).

Although this is a personal rather than business site, if one googles for my site, you receive pages praising it, quoting it as an example of good web design in the results. The only disadvantage of it is the high profile has increased the amount of spam I get to the (spam catcher) email address listed on the site. This is the main reason I don't quote the site URL in my signature here, because I get more than enough spam there already, and don't want to overly promote it, so it only goes in where it contains a resource that would be useful, or have a legitimate reason to allow another member to contact me off site.

John

 

[BigCatMCS]

I know this will take a lot of time. If I stay consistent, I say maybe in about two years I'll be able to get something small. I'll take a pay cut, but sometimes you got to take a step back to go two steps forwards.

 

[pl12987]

Strangely, nobody has really mentioned the front end. It's an important skill set. You need to know something about navigation conventions, such as menu usage and layout, buttons, pick lists, etc. and human factors if you plan on doing any design work. Design isn"t just pretty graphics...it is about making the site usable and "sticky" (i.e., user-friendly and attractive, so people stay on the site and want to come back.) I'd recommend an excellent book called Web Design for Non-Designers.

Also, for a scripting/programming langugage, the top three are ASP / ASP.NET, ColdFusion, and PHP. You don't need all three, but the more you have experience with, the easier it will be to get a job.

You definitely can learn part-time elsewhere and then scale up your career as you gain experience. That's how many have done it.

Good luck.

Jeff

 

[shannonlapekas]

I am in a similar situation where I am working full time while I have a family. I started to go to school through a local college online. I have found the experience invaluable. If I only have time to work at midnight then no one at the school is going to tell me that I can't. It is hard work but my salary has gone up $10,000 dollars since I started school and I expect next year when I earn my Bachelor's degree that it will go up even more. I know that a lot of people think that online colleges are not as good as on the ground or that they are a scam but if you can find a reputable accredited local college it can be an excellent experience. My first Bachelors degree was in business from a traditional 4 year university and I think that I am learning more practical hands on things in the online environment because of the test labs that they set up. I know that it would have been really hard for me to learn all I needed to know without any formal education.

 

[robbieguy2003]

Working in the ISP environment im lucky to get exposure to all the major web languages (xml, perl, php, asp, vbscript, coldfusion etc).

Out of the lot though i've got to say php in a linux enviroment has to be my favourite.

Although ASP is widely used it tends to fail and cry wolf much more than anything else.

PHP is something that just doesn't mess up. Once your script is working it will stay working. If your looking for an entry job (or doing charity work) i would advise going for PHP. Reasons for this that you'll get less hassle (wont break) and also hosting is cheaper (no massive MS Licence Fee).

To sum up, greater reliability for less money and quite easy to learn.

Hope this helps.

Rob

Servers live with the rule - What goes up must come down