Web Developer courses?

[elrasho]

Anyone recommend any? Ive been looknig at CIW but dont know much about them

 

[No Limit]

Define web developer. Are you talking from the design sense, programming sense, or both?

 

[DreamThrall]

Advice from someone who's been there before...

Don't waste your money on specialty school-type programming courses. Even the so-called "advanced" courses hardly touch on anything you couldn't easily learn on your own.

My advice is to pick a language, get a good book (or two or three), give yourself a project and learn by doing it.

I picked up an ASP 3.0 book when I was 16... I'm now 25, earn a $82k salary - all without stepping foot on a college campus, and with no professional instruction.



EDIT: Don't learn ASP 3.0, lol

 

[Raziaar]

I picked up an ASP 3.0 book when I was 16... I'm now 25, earn a $82k salary - all without stepping foot on a college campus, and with no professional instruction.

Wow, nice!

Too bad I can't spend all my time focusing on the ASP.NET development. Decided to give myself a big break from it until I could come up with some website ideas and afford a webserver of my own to mess with.

 

[No Limit]

I would disagree with dreamthrall. Although I do agree that you could learn this on your own that takes a lot of time. You can learn this in school in a matter of months whereas teaching yourself will take years.

 

[DreamThrall]

I would disagree with dreamthrall. Although I do agree that you could learn this on your own that takes a lot of time. You can learn this in school in a matter of months whereas teaching yourself will take years.

In my opinion, programming is one of those fields where book knowledge means [mostly] crap. No self respecting employer is going to hire someone because they shelled out a small fortune for technical courses. No matter what you do, you're doing to need to spend time actually working on things so you understand how it works in practice. And by in practice, I don't mean the cheesy 1-2 hour assignments they'll give in your $3k class. May as well save the money (or buy yourself a car instead), the hours of boredom (these types of classes are rarely well-taught) and get to coding!

 

[elrasho]

When I say developer I wanna learn HTML, XHTML and CSS. Ive got some e-books but was looking to get some sort of qualification that I can show to Employers

 

[DreamThrall]

Well here's a list of certifications I found:

http://certification.about.com/od/webinternet/Web_and_Internet_Certifications.htm

But honestly, certifications don't mean jack. When I'm looking at hiring new people, I don't care if they're MCSD certified or not. All a certification proves is that you're good at memorizing things and you have some extra money to throw around.

 

[elrasho]

So DreamThrall what do you look for when emplying someone?

 

[DreamThrall]

good communication skills; good personality; solid understanding of OOP and at least one OOP language, fundamental knowledge of stuff like HTTP, HTML, XML, relational data, etc; solid english-speaking skills... meh why am I paraphrasing...

This:
http://gratisinternet.com/Careers/Openings.aspx?JobID=5

Note the absence of any form of the word "certification" on the page

 

[Ennui]

I really think I'll end up working in web development for a career (here at uni I'll probably end up majoring in something useless like Italian or Anthropology) so these threads interest me.

Currently I have a very solid knowledge of HTML, XML, and CSS, as well as design principles, and I'm learning PHP. After that I was thinking I should go on and learn ASP.NET, but would Python or Javascript be better to learn?

Also, how important is graphic design in the scheme of things? I follow the "Developers, not coders" thing on your company's site there, but while I can design and build a pretty tasty website on my own I don't think I'm ever going to be stellar at the graphical side of things.

 

[No Limit]

In my opinion, programming is one of those fields where book knowledge means [mostly] crap. No self respecting employer is going to hire someone because they shelled out a small fortune for technical courses. No matter what you do, you're doing to need to spend time actually working on things so you understand how it works in practice. And by in practice, I don't mean the cheesy 1-2 hour assignments they'll give in your $3k class. May as well save the money (or buy yourself a car instead), the hours of boredom (these types of classes are rarely well-taught) and get to coding!

In state community college classes are nowhere near $3k. Here in Albuquerque they cost around $40 plus an addition $50-$100 for books. I do agree with you that you need to apply it to learn anything but before you can apply something you need to understand how it works.

And although education isn't the only thing employers look for it sure is hard to find a job in programming without a bachelor's in computer science, even if you are an exception (did you happen to have some personal connection to the company you work with, either by family or friendship?).

 

[elrasho]

Developing and Designing are differnet things all together. If you know HTMX, XML, CSS and PHP Id stick to Developer coz you've already got experience there. Once your full comfortable with these go for ASP.NET and Java, its the next logical step.

If you wanna get into Design too.... then boy you got Skillz

 

[DreamThrall]

@Ennui:
IMO, after using JavaScript for several years for client side glitzyness, I've decided it's a huge pain in the arse. If you're learning PHP, you'll already know the basic syntax. Besides that, rather than *learn* JavaScript, I'd familiarize yourself with one of the existing JavaScript ajax/effects frameworks like jQuery instead. It couldn't hurt to know JavaScript just for the sake of having a rough idea of how all that works, but honestly, learning Python would be a better investment of your time imo.

Of course, my vote is to go straight for C#/ASP.NET, but I'm sure anyone who's read any of my web developer-related posts has already figured that out

Also, how important is graphic design in the scheme of things? I follow the "Developers, not coders" thing on your company's site there, but while I can design and build a pretty tasty website on my own I don't think I'm ever going to be stellar at the graphical side of things.

At least in my company, if the design is *really* that important, we'll contract a professional designer, like one of these guys:

http://www.fortyagency.com
http://volocreative.com

Other than that, I've got a decent eye for design that gets us by - but we don't fault our devs for not being able to make something look pretty.

 

[elrasho]

Hey DreamThrall can you reccommend any books for a total noob when it comes to HTML, XML and CSS?

 

[No Limit]

Currently I have a very solid knowledge of HTML, XML, and CSS, as well as design principles, and I'm learning PHP. After that I was thinking I should go on and learn ASP.NET, but would Python or Javascript be better to learn?

Javascript is becoming a very serious thing in web development because of AJAX. It used to be sort of a joke since there wasn't much use for it but we are getting closer to seeing the day where many traditional computer applications will become web based. And all that will be done around javascript unless something else pops up (doesnt look like it will). So I would highly recommend you combine javascript with whatever server side language you are using (PHP is a perfectly good language).

 

[DreamThrall]

For that stuff, I usually just use www.w3schools.com for reference when I have questions. They've got some good tutorials too... I used them when I needed to learn XPath and XML Schema.

EDIT: @NoLimit and Ennui: Good read on JavaScript: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001163.html

Frankly, it is foolish to even consider rolling your own JavaScript code to do even the most trivial of things in a browser now. Instead, choose one of these mature, widely tested JavaScript API frameworks. Spend a little time learning it. You'll ultimately write less code that does more -- and (almost) never have to worry a lick about browser compatibility.

 

[No Limit]

I agree that you should use a framework if you are doing something advanced. But even if you use a framework you will need to have javascript experiance to make use of it. In addition, for simple applications I really don't want to force my visitors to have to download a 90k framework to submit a simple form.

 

[DreamThrall]

I agree that you should use a framework if you are doing something advanced. But even if you use a framework you will need to have javascript experiance to make use of it. In addition, for simple applications I really don't want to force my visitors to have to download a 90k framework to submit a simple form.

I haven't tried any of the other frameworks, but with jQuery, you can separate the packages, and they also offer both the uncompressed version and 2-3 different kinds of compression.

The core functionality can be packed down to 31KB... and then the UI effects can be referenced individually if you need them, and that ranges from ~1-2KB for visual effects to 6-25KB for features like dialogs and datepickers, plus a single 10KB UI core reference.

I've written a control for ASP.NET that lets you specify a list of effects you need to use, and then it automatically references only the scripts required for those effects... I'm sure something similar could be done for php.

Also... Don't underestimate the process of designing a form. Depending on what the form is for and how you design its flow, using niceties like jQuery offers could mean the difference between someone registering or not, someone filling out a form completely and accurately (or not)... you get the idea.


For example, if you've got a registration form with 20 fields (which you should *never* have, in my opinion, but let's ignore that for the sake of this example); if someone loads the page and sees 20 fields they have to fill out, they're likely to say "oh eff this" and either not fill it out at all, or get bored/irritated/whatever halfway through and fill out part of it, or put in fake answers for some of it.

If you split it up into parts and make it flow more like a wizard, they're more likely to follow through the entire process... and it'll be much easier to do that with something like jQuery than to try do manually code it all in raw JavaScript.

 

[No Limit]

That's pretty cool, I'll have to give jquery a deeper look.

 

[DreamThrall]

That's pretty cool, I'll have to give jquery a deeper look.

Sweet. If you end up liking it, I can help you out with the logic for that auto referencing code. It's pretty easy.

 

[No Limit]

Great, thanks.

 

[PvtRyan]

Have to agree with DreamThrall. Courses or schooling doesn't teach you jack shit on the practical side of development. Sure, I learned a lot from doing programming projects in school but that's still teaching yourself and the school is superfluous then.

I've fairly recently started an internship and in that short period I've learned ASP.NET and C# and a hefty amount of SQL. It's amazing how good working in a production environment is for your learning.

However, while I wouldn't ever take a course on just programming, a course on computer science in general can be useful for your theoretical knowledge on computing. It's useful to know how the HTTP protocol works, rather than blindly use the .NET or Java library that completely hides how it really works. You can use the massive libraries that are out there and be an effective programmer, or you can combine that with theoretical knowledge to also become an efficient programmer, because you know how memory works, etc.

But yeah, I wonder why - and indeed if - employers value a certificate or degree. I know plenty of people who will graduate and still be piss poor at what they do.

BTW DreamThrall, since you seem to be big on ASP.NET and C#: what do you think of the ASP.NET MVC framework? I only have experience with the regular ASP.NET and MVC seems much more elegant. Although I kind of dislike the heavy use of code tags in what is supposed to be the view, JSP does that better with more elegant tags rather than raw code in your view.

 

[Saturos]

I'm hoping to take some web developing courses sometimes next year.

Writing code can be fun when it doesn't make your head hurt!

 

[DreamThrall]

BTW DreamThrall, since you seem to be big on ASP.NET and C#: what do you think of the ASP.NET MVC framework? I only have experience with the regular ASP.NET and MVC seems much more elegant. Although I kind of dislike the heavy use of code tags in what is supposed to be the view, JSP does that better with more elegant tags rather than raw code in your view.

I'm not sure. Honestly, I haven't really gotten to play around with it much, and the stuff I have played with is from like 3 previews ago.

That said, I'm so used to the WebForms way of doing things, I don't know how I feel about completely changing that. Ultimately, I suppose it'll just be another way to do things. It'll most likely make it a lot easier for people coming from a PHP or Ruby background to use ASP.NET, because truly understanding the *right* way to write a WebForms application is no small feat. After 5+ years coding in ASP.NET (since .NET Framework v1.1 was released) I'd like to say I've mastered it... but if you asked me to name all the different stages of the Page lifecycle, I really don't think I could.

I'm definitely going to give it a go once it gets released though. I really like the idea of MVC in theory, and I'm interested to see how the finished product works out in practice.