Leaving web development?? I'm at a cross road

[stuck]

I have reached a point in my life were I have begun hating my job and would just like some good honest advice from other developers.

I have a degree in IT which I obtained from UJ in about 2006, I have since worked for an agency for the last 4 and a half years as a PHP developer. Over the past year my job has become quite unpleasant due to internal politics, high work load and being expected to work over-time constantly (with no pay I may add). So I began searching for a new job this year (February) and I have been to around 10 interviews so far.

Although companies have made offers, nothing has really taken my eye. I have come to the realization that all agencies are same and offer border line exploitation working conditions. I just look at the jobs on offer and I’m like no I can’t go through that again… perhaps I’m getting to old for this? (I’m 28 BTW lol).

Not only this, I just cringe at the thought of having to look at other developers code…another realization I have come to: PHP is a chaotic language! Very few developers I’ve come across have use any sort of structure let alone frameworks.

This year for personal interest I’ve started teaching myself Objective-C and it has just felt like a breath of fresh air. I’m loving the structure and just being less involved in the design side of things, not having to worry about silly little CSS issues and more on the actual coding. I’m starting to think that web was a mistake for me to go into and that application development is something that I should rather have gone into. Am I just being a sissy?
I am at a cross roads in my life, I can continue with something I am not so sure about or go into something else. I want to open my own company one day, but I feel I’m at least two years away from where I can do this comfortably.

I would like to find out if there are any other web developers that feel the same way I do? Also, are there any web developers that have moved into application development? How did you go about doing that? I feel stuck in the sense that it seems almost impossible to move into another field without some sort of experience.

If anyone has any other sort of advice I would be grateful if you shared.

 

[walterl]

I've been a developer for about 20 years...all I can say is embrace change, as in our jobs nothing stays the same for too long, so just as you get comfortable in a development Language it will become redundant...so you might as well get used to it by changing now!

 

[steed]

I can totally relate to what you are saying. PHP development ends up being very much of the same old same old with no structure at all. The problem is structure in the language is optional, most people opt out as they don't have the time/patience. I messed with it a little and decided to avoid the headache. I am now doing asp.net dev, lot nicer to code in, but in my opinion web dev of any kind leads to repetition, boredom, and poor working conditions.

Application development is way better ... even server side apps, windows services, are a lot lot more fun than pure web dev. When I say server side app, I don't mean stuff that serves content to a browser either. I mean applications that process data in interesting ways and so on.

C# is a very good language to learn.
Objective C is Apple friendly for the most part, there is a big market for iphone apps.
Dont forget to look at Android app development either. The market is getting saturated with Android phones. There are a lot of Android apps, but sadly the quality of them isnt as high as stuff for Apples i-devices. This of course leaves a lot of room for new devs to do amazing things and make money assuming they have the time and resources to go for it.
Dont forget about normal C and embedded applications either. Apps that make devices work fun to write.

Remember also that for clued up developers you can always escape into management or consulting or being an analyst. Naturally these are more "people" orientated jobs than pure coding, so it may seem an unfriendly idea to some devs, but if you can manage the challenge there are opportunities for you.

 

[ponder]

Maybe you would find something like development for embedded devices interesting?
Not sure if you require a bit of engineering background though.

 

[deweyzeph]

Why don't you just refuse to work overtime? I've worked at agencies before where they took advantage of developers and expected them to work massive amounts of unpaid overtime. Eventually I had enough and told them either you pay me for the overtime I do, or I will work 9 - 5 as per the conditions of my employment. The cheap bastards told me to rather work my hours instead of paying me for overtime.

By the way, you cannot be fired for refusing to work overtime.

 

[Venom Rush]

I can totally relate to what you are saying. PHP development ends up being very much of the same old same old with no structure at all. The problem is structure in the language is optional, most people opt out as they don't have the time/patience. I messed with it a little and decided to avoid the headache. I am now doing asp.net dev, lot nicer to code in, but in my opinion web dev of any kind leads to repetition, boredom, and poor working conditions.

Application development is way better ... even server side apps, windows services, are a lot lot more fun than pure web dev. When I say server side app, I don't mean stuff that serves content to a browser either. I mean applications that process data in interesting ways and so on.

C# is a very good language to learn.
Objective C is Apple friendly for the most part, there is a big market for iphone apps.
Dont forget to look at Android app development either. The market is getting saturated with Android phones. There are a lot of Android apps, but sadly the quality of them isnt as high as stuff for Apples i-devices. This of course leaves a lot of room for new devs to do amazing things and make money assuming they have the time and resources to go for it.
Dont forget about normal C and embedded applications either. Apps that make devices work fun to write.

Remember also that for clued up developers you can always escape into management or consulting or being an analyst. Naturally these are more "people" orientated jobs than pure coding, so it may seem an unfriendly idea to some devs, but if you can manage the challenge there are opportunities for you.

I had done a C# programming course after I left school but due to circumstances I didn't finish the course (did everything up to and excluding the C# part).
What areas of C# other than Objective C are there? PM me if you like

 

[steed]

I had done a C# programming course after I left school but due to circumstances I didn't finish the course (did everything up to and excluding the C# part).
What areas of C# other than Objective C are there? PM me if you like

Hi,

C# and Objective C are different languages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language)

C# is the primary language in Microsofts .net ecosystem. It is standardized and can run on other *nix like OS such as Linux via Mono
Objective C is cross platform, but in real life is used almost exclusively for Apple Development, e.g. iphone, ipad, mac, etc.
C# is like java with a bit of every other language added in. Its a bit cleaner and nicer to use than java. (My opinion)
Objective C, I not really used it, but from what I can tell its C with object orientation added, without getting all messy like C++

Regards,

Steed.

 

[Venom Rush]

Thanks Steed

 

[Geriatrix]

Why not try Ruby and ROR? Most devs are raving about them.

Regarding your general working conditions, that's what its like in IT related careers nowadays IMO. I'm in the same boat. Only thing you can really do is go freelance or open your own shop.

 

[Voicy]

Maybe you would find something like development for embedded devices interesting?
Not sure if you require a bit of engineering background though.

Engineering background is a definite plus, especially if you don't factor into account things like switch debouncing, tieing all unassigned pins to ground to avoid them becoming antennae, etc. I haven't done any fancy ASM programming since the old ATMEL and PIC16F84's, but electronics is a must if you want to do any type of fault finding.

Having said that, it's a LOT of fun!

 

[ponder]

Having said that, it's a LOT of fun!

Ja, that's kinda what I'm getting at. Developing for embedded devices I found to be a lot more fun that just plain old programming. I believe these days ASM is not as widely used any more, C and higher level languages are being used.

ASM is actually easy, about 4yrs ago I helped a varsity student out with an assignment after I have not touched it myself in over 15 yrs, thank god I still had my text book for reference purposes

 

[Hamster]

No offence to anyone here, but if you want a 8 to 5 job you chose the wrong profession becoming a developer (or am I just very unlucky?). And you are not gonna get away from not looking at other peoples code... unless of course you open your own dev shop and get minions to do the crap work for you

I started a s a web developer (.NET, JavaScript etc). It was fun and all but I left after two years (mostly because they refused to give me an increase on my anniversary. Small companies suck). Anyway, I moved to JHB and got a job at a large software company. I started with the .NET front end work but taught myself Python and haven't looked back. I'll admit, I am biased towards Python (you Ruby fanboys can suck it!) but I would definitely recommend it in combination with C# (or Java).

Objective-C is Apple. So if you want to go write stuff for iPads and IPhones this is for you.
Android is based on a "scaled down" Java (you can't really go wrong with Java)

 

[krycor]

Uhm 8 to 5 do exist but depends on what you are developing. When developing 24/7 systems for large scale systems you sometimes have no choice especially when things go wrong. The whole not wanting to look at other peoples messy code is something you can't get out of, best bet would be to get the team to stick to a convention or standard which ideally should happen anyway. The working late is probably a norm in SA for web/24/7 services but .. i agree with the above, if its not emergency work they just not project managing properly. Technically you have 40hours a week + overtime allowance and when this is exceeded you not really allowed to work without either 1. doing so on your own for whatever reason e.g. boredom(i'm guilty of this), dodging traffic etc or 2. approval to do so with or without compensation.

In general I don't like development because i think of it as a real time sucker and when you have a bad day things can go really slow lol but it can be fun and challenging so I do it.

 

[CrazYmonkeY159]

I have dabbled in both, while i dont have much work expirience under my belt I can definately relate to hating reading other peoples PHP code, it's nasty.

I still see myself as an applications dev, and its a different story most of the time. for varsity and side projects I end up using open source code (C++ or python) mainly and there is nothing that gets me more excited than seeing well documented API calls (like how fantastic Qt's docs are)

But ive found myself being too much of an OO person and less of a scripter, and ive been trying to do more shell/perl/php stype coding. whenever i code in these languages i dont feel as "connected" to them.