Web Development as a career

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kb1987

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Just a little bit of background info . I am knocking on 30's door next year and I need to get myself out of this rut I find myself in, namely "Call Centre Work". I simply cannot go another year listening to customer's complaints and taking the flack for poor strategic decisions by the powers that be. Along the way I have tried working for myself and that didnt work out too well so I find myself in an endless circle. . .

But there is hope, I have always loved designing WebSites and being creative ( HTML and CSS predominantly ). More recently I have started getting into Javascript and I am really loving the challenge.

In a nutshell I want to be a web developer but there are a few pressing questions . . . . ( and I stand to be corrected on a lot of the points I am about to mention)

  2. It seems that overseas countries are more open to Web Designers/Developers without formal qualifications but a solid porfolio of clients , or even solid body of work on places like GitHub. Is this the case in South Africa? Would I be eligible for employment if I am uncertified but able to show what I can do?
  3. On that note, I would like to get some sort of short course behind my name at least. Anything ranging from 6 months to a year long solid course. Does anyone know where I can look at studying?


I currently work for an ISP and would like to upskill as a dev, but I need to at least have the basics of the programming language down.

An ideal trajectory for me would be to get into web design in like 3 - 6 months and then branch into a specific language and specialize in that area of development. . . most likely PHP or Javascript.

I'd love to hear your opinions on what I have said.
 
Good front end devs are few and there is great demand, both in SA and overseas.

IMO a 'good' front end dev is someone who has a designers eye and coders mind. That is: you can understand the aesthetic and UX requirements and you have the technical chops to make it happen in the browser.

Javascript (with JQuery) is going to be a good addition to your HTML/CSS skills so focus there for now. Coursera, Codeacademy, etc. all have great resources.

If you can show your skills then (as someone who hires/manages/was once a web dev/s) I wouldn't give a flying figaro about any qualifications. In fact: I'd wonder what the hell is wrong with you sitting on a training course when you could have been working on your portfolio.

If you love the work then we'll be able to geek out on the latest methods and emerging tech and that is an excellent indicator to me personally.

Once you are confident, start approaching design studios - they are constantly looking for good front end developers.
 
Hi SlinkyMike,

Thank you for the feedback it is good to know I am on the right track. I seem to be learning a lot from codecademy.org , however I'd like to practice some more scripting.

Do you know of any resources where I can get some good excercises and "test your knowledge" kinda things?
 
kb1987 said:
Hi SlinkyMike,

Thank you for the feedback it is good to know I am on the right track. I seem to be learning a lot from codecademy.org , however I'd like to practice some more scripting.

Do you know of any resources where I can get some good excercises and "test your knowledge" kinda things?
Click to expand...

Make up a project.

What have you seen that you'd like to do or what doesn't exist that you'd like to see?

Theres your first example for your portfolio.
 
They might not be very useful long term, but for fun you could do something like www.codewars.com
 
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Thanks _kabal_

This looks like so much fun :-) . . . . definitely gonna play around there once I get my JS skills on par.
 
On coursera, you could this their web design specialization, or their web development specialization. These are classified as "beginner" specializations.

On the "intermediate" level, you could try the full stack stack web development specialization. I'm halfway through course 3 of this specialization, and it has been quite informative: even though it's on the intermediate level, it teaches you the web-specific stuff from scratch. I've 16 years dev experience, but no commercial web development experience, so this specialization is perfect for me. If you have no dev experience, you might find too little time being spent on certain topics.

If you're mostly interested in just web design, then one of the first two specializations will do nicely.
 
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Sodan said:
On coursera, you could this their web design specialization, or their web development specialization. These are classified as "beginner" specializations.

On the "intermediate" level, you could try the full stack stack web development specialization. I'm halfway through course 3 of this specialization, and it has been quite informative: even though it's on the intermediate level, it teaches you the web-specific stuff from scratch. I've 16 years dev experience, but no commercial web development experience, so this specialization is perfect for me. If you have no dev experience, you might find too little time being spent on certain topics.

If you're mostly interested in just web design, then one of the first two specializations will do nicely.
Click to expand...

US$346 USD X 3

For stuff you can learn on youtube?
 
Sodan said:
On coursera, you could this their web design specialization, or their web development specialization. These are classified as "beginner" specializations.

On the "intermediate" level, you could try the full stack stack web development specialization. I'm halfway through course 3 of this specialization, and it has been quite informative: even though it's on the intermediate level, it teaches you the web-specific stuff from scratch. I've 16 years dev experience, but no commercial web development experience, so this specialization is perfect for me. If you have no dev experience, you might find too little time being spent on certain topics.

If you're mostly interested in just web design, then one of the first two specializations will do nicely.
Click to expand...

US$346 USD X 3

For stuff you can learn on youtube?
 
rward said:
I don't think you know the meaning of investing for the future....
Click to expand...

Rather use that money to buy a proper Internet connection that and more bandwidth to download free quality lessons and subscribe to Lynda.com

It will be a better investment and more affordable.
 
I'm telling you Lynda.com has been an absolutely stunning investment in my life.
 
Thor187 said:
Edit:

US$346 USD x 1

US$426 USD x 2
Click to expand...
Personally I would never pay someone to interpret a manual or online documentation or a book for me; It's not as if we're talking proprietary stuff. The only courses I ever went on were for RPG, primarily because the Internet (WWW) didn't exist and the old Usenets (archie, veronica, ...) didn't provide any help for the proprietary stuff, but to eat I had to learn something that could bring in a monthly wage.

Today with the wealth of resources, many freely available from prominent universities I think anyone doing a course needs to have their head read or isn't committed to being a programmer (this is coming from someone who mastered basic & assembler 37 years ago, when there was no Internet or Usenets)
 
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You can search those courses one by one and do them for free.
i.e -- https://www.coursera.org/learn/web-frameworks
Not sure about youtube. A few channels are decent but most are just plain rubbish. Mostly, I watch conference talks.
But yer, nothing beats a good a book.
... then again, some people prefer videos
 
Both resources look cool.

Do the certificates hold any weight in the job market? I see alot of ads on job portals where they want you to have a BSC or Bcom, so I wouldnt want to waste time on courses that will not be recognised at all.
 
I don't think those certificates mean much, but, I'm not a developer.

I'm learning the basics of Python, then I am going to practice a bit on what I've learned and for my first project I'm going to try and write an IRC bot. There's a lot of example code out there to get you started if you pick a decent project.

Hopefully I will succeed and add a useful feature to the bot so I can get the confidence to move onto bigger projects.

I think at the end of the day working towards something on your own will teach you more. The moment you get out of codeacademy's lessons and start trying to code something yourself is when you realise how much you still need to learn to think like a programmer. I have learned that the hard way.

Just stick to it I say, be persistent. For me it's like math, if I practice every day I become better at it.
 
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