How to construct a web developer in twelve months

I agree with all, but "Build" and "Play" are the crux of the whole thing. All the rest of the list are best utilized by buttressing one's expanding coding skills. I'm about 6 months in to my dedicated, hardcore effort to turn myself into a programmer (with a focus on the web). Nothing happened for me that was worth mentioning until I started making things. THEN I started participating in HN, reading books and researching more vigorously. Because I had context.

This is why sometimes web developers are considered 2th class developers, we waste so much time reading blogs and news, that we don't practice what we love.

I don't see half of web dev blogs for languages such as C/C++, Java, C#, etc..etc.. I know the web is like a living organism, creating new things to learn everyday, but still.

But what about algorithms ? Design patterns ? Code optimization ? This are boring concepts I know, but they are amazingly useful if you want to be taken serious on this area. I love when I meet web developers who know what a C pointer and what memory allocation means. They don't have to, but that just shows that they know what's behind the curtains when they code in PHP, Python, whatever...and I will trust their code more than a guy who knows dozens of frameworks and tools, but don't understand the concepts behind those.

I just think that there's so much things going on that's it's either: or you get highly skilled at something or the jack-of-all trades.

So instead of the list the author gave I would suggest:

- Download open source code, and read it, understand it and try to come up with better solutions for small code fragments and share with the community or the author. You have no idea how fast you will learn and will look great your CV.

- Comeback to IRC, irc.freenode.com has amazing dedicated developers channels where you can share ideas and get help.

- Dedicate only 1h per day to read a book or a tutorial, and write down stuff you think you need to understand. Come back the next day, read what your wrote last night and continue.

- Practice and practice

I couldn't agree more. But I think 8 belongs near the top. I am currently helping re-condition experienced mainframe developers into web developers, and I can't stress enough the importance of tools. Understanding the browser, HTTP request and response, cookies, web security, and the OSI model is crucial.

Funny reading this post because the title pretty much describes what I'm doing, taking some time off to hone my programming chops and I originally came from a finance background. Looking back, if I had to suggest my own list to someone who's serious about learning:

1. Be obsessed with Github + Hacker News and always consult @yegg's archive for guidance - http://gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

2. Start off by building a web app using the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), and HTML/CSS, and set up your own server on Slicehost or the like. Also learn Javascript and jQuery.

3. Choose a good text editor and familiarize yourself with it, it's a long-term investment.

4. Focus on getting good with one or two languages, and keep building stuff and learning from others.

That's just for web stuff though. For being a solid developer, Joel Spolsky recommends throwing these four books in there too to build a good CS foundation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/414779/what-should-a-self...

I normally hang out on #macdev , #iphonedev, #C, etc. but you can find any language specific topic