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Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

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Re: Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

#21

Post by mlangdon »

As a recent novice-to-employed developer myself, I would caution against jumping into the rails stack. This is not a knock on rails, however. Where I live (Michigan, US) there are plenty of web dev job openings at any given time. But about 50% are C# MVC or ASP.net, another 25% are PHP drupal or wordpress and then come Django, Rails and the rare node job.

My point is if "employable" is the goal, check out the jobs listed on stackoverflow and indeed, etc., in your area before picking a learning plan.

(Incidentally, I learned Java/Android and Python and count myself very lucky to be employed in non-web dev.)

Re: Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

#22

Post by enraged_camel »

mlangdon wrote: post #21

As a recent novice-to-employed developer myself, I would caution against jumping into the rails stack. This is not a knock on rails, however. Where I live (Michigan, US) there are plenty of web dev job openings at any given time. But about 50% are C# MVC or ASP.net, another 25% are PHP drupal or wordpress and then come Django, Rails and the rare node job. My point is if "employable" is the goal, check out the jobs li…

>>As a recent novice-to-employed developer myself, I would caution against jumping into the rails stack. This is not a knock on rails, however. Where I live (Michigan, US) there are plenty of web dev job openings at any given time. But about 50% are C# MVC or ASP.net, another 25% are PHP drupal or wordpress and then come Django, Rails and the rare node job.

As a novice who is learning web programming, I find this... odd. No JavaScript/Jquery? Is that not by far the most commonly used language/framework on the web?

For server-side, I can understand PHP, Rails and ASP.NET but I would expect JavaScript to dominate the front-end.

Re: Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

#23

Post by saraid216 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22
mlangdon wrote: post #21

As a recent novice-to-employed developer myself, I would caution against jumping into the rails stack. This is not a knock on rails, however. Where I live (Michigan, US) there are plenty of web dev job openings at any given time. But about 50% are C# MVC or ASP.net, another 25% are PHP drupal or wordpress and then come Django, Rails and the rare node job. My point is if "employable" is the goal, check out the jobs li…

>> As a recent novice-to-employed developer myself, I would caution against jumping into the rails stack. This is not a knock on rails, however. Where I live (Michigan, US) there are plenty of web dev job openings at any given time. But about 50% are C# MVC or ASP.net, another 25% are PHP drupal or wordpress and then come Django, Rails and the rare node job. As a novice who is learning web programming, I find this...…

Client-side JS/jQuery is very nearly assumed to be a requirement for all web developer jobs, regardless of server-side language.

Re: Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

#25

Post by mlangdon »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22
mlangdon wrote: post #21

As a recent novice-to-employed developer myself, I would caution against jumping into the rails stack. This is not a knock on rails, however. Where I live (Michigan, US) there are plenty of web dev job openings at any given time. But about 50% are C# MVC or ASP.net, another 25% are PHP drupal or wordpress and then come Django, Rails and the rare node job. My point is if "employable" is the goal, check out the jobs li…

>> As a recent novice-to-employed developer myself, I would caution against jumping into the rails stack. This is not a knock on rails, however. Where I live (Michigan, US) there are plenty of web dev job openings at any given time. But about 50% are C# MVC or ASP.net, another 25% are PHP drupal or wordpress and then come Django, Rails and the rare node job. As a novice who is learning web programming, I find this...…

You are absolutely correct. You will need JS and JQuery on the front end. I was really only talking about the back end, though I was not clear about that.

Re: Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

#26

Post by mlangdon »

RRRA wrote: post #24

Is there something like this but that could do both (or either) Drupal and Node? :)

You might not be able to get the "all in one place" part, but there has never been a better time to become self-taught. If you haven't programmed at all yet, immerse yourself in some JavaScript till you can "walk", then track down the rest of your stack of choice.

Re: Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

#27

Post by RRRA »

mlangdon wrote: post #26
RRRA wrote: post #24

Is there something like this but that could do both (or either) Drupal and Node? :)

You might not be able to get the "all in one place" part, but there has never been a better time to become self-taught. If you haven't programmed at all yet, immerse yourself in some JavaScript till you can "walk", then track down the rest of your stack of choice.

I have a Comp. Sci background but worked mostly as a sysadmin (bash, voip, firewalls and whatnot) on low level back end stuff...

I'm currently not hands deep into code either, but I'd love to be able to understand and catch up on a full stack, mostly the web part, for which I didn't invest much time till now! So anything web server and above feel strangely like another world even though I've always been around them and can configure a web server without any problem, I just never dealt with the whole session management, programming etc in that context.

I've also done some projects in javascript, though without frameworks up till now.

Node.js sounds fun but my understanding was that it's not quite ready as a CMS, like Drupal? I might actually just start with Node though as I can stick to 1 language and concentrate on small real time projects. I've had a bad feeling about rails many years ago that might also explain a few things... ;-) Cheers.

Re: Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

#28

Post by mlangdon »

RRRA wrote: post #27
mlangdon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not be able to get the "all in one place" part, but there has never been a better time to become self-taught. If you haven't programmed at all yet, immerse yourself in some JavaScript till you can "walk", then track down the rest of your stack of choice.

I have a Comp. Sci background but worked mostly as a sysadmin (bash, voip, firewalls and whatnot) on low level back end stuff... I'm currently not hands deep into code either, but I'd love to be able to understand and catch up on a full stack, mostly the web part, for which I didn't invest much time till now! So anything web server and above feel strangely like another world even though I've always been around them a…

Node might make more sense in your case. It's almost too easy to throw something together in drupal. You never actually need to touch PHP or JS. From my (admittedly shallow) exposure to node, it seems to be a healthy mixture of minimal boilerplate and actually writing some code ever. You'll get the experience of doing for yourself rather and than buying into a preconfigured, but ultimately limiting ecosystem.

Re: Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

#29

Post by snowwrestler »

RRRA wrote: post #27
mlangdon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not be able to get the "all in one place" part, but there has never been a better time to become self-taught. If you haven't programmed at all yet, immerse yourself in some JavaScript till you can "walk", then track down the rest of your stack of choice.

I have a Comp. Sci background but worked mostly as a sysadmin (bash, voip, firewalls and whatnot) on low level back end stuff... I'm currently not hands deep into code either, but I'd love to be able to understand and catch up on a full stack, mostly the web part, for which I didn't invest much time till now! So anything web server and above feel strangely like another world even though I've always been around them a…

Drupal and node.js are not really directly comparable.

Drupal is really just a (complicated) CMS. Starting with version 7 it is now flexible enough to be a framework, but it is S-L-O-W. Every sizable Drupal site depends heavily on caching to maintain acceptable performance. I don't know of anyone but Drupal shops (like Phase 2 or Acquia) who have built actual software products on top of Drupal.

Drupal is developed in PHP, but its codebase is well behind modern programming practices. The community is only just now introducing object-oriented architecture in Drupal 8, which is still in alpha development. So: if you learn Drupal, you will not have easily transferable skills. But the demand for Drupal devs is growing fast, at least on the east coast, so you could have a very rewarding career.

Node.js is a lower-level framework. You could use it build a CMS (and some people have [1]), but you could also use it to build a lot of other things, with a good chance that it will be performant. And since it's based entirely on javascript, and is seen as "hot" and up-and-coming, there may be broader opportunities for you there as a programmer.

Re: Learn Web Development: From Novice to Employable

#30

Post by VaedaStrike »

What I'd like would be a 'From Novice to Employable using Clojure'

I've heard some nice things about Ruby, but I think I'm too much of a spoiled noob in my exposure to Clojure. I'd even take a class if it was Scala or Erlang or something along those lines.

Sometimes I hate being a spoiled noob, because I'd really like a job programming, but I don't want to pause learning Clojure unless I'm learning some language that seems to be at least close to it. But trying to get a job whene you can build stuff in Clojure but not much else (I've done a little in Python too, and did enjoy that a bit) is a tough task. Or at least it has been for me up to this point. Virtually everyone wants some veteran Java or Python hacker who's also got Clojure chops.

A job in Clojure centric web development...is it too much to ask?

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