How to Get into the Web Development Business
Q
I really want to get into web designing or development but I don't know where to begin.
Could you please give me some advice on how to get into this business?
A
Quite a good question.
But I can only tell you what worked "for me" rather than what will work for everyone.
The way I learned to program web applications was by finding something that I really loved: social policy; and then making a website devoted to it.
You can see some of my original work at www.extropia.com/selena/extropia and www.extropia.com/selena/struggle.
When I began, it was all just HTML and images.
After a while, I decided that I wanted better ways to interact with my web audience and so I decided to learn how to program a simple bulletin board system (like a guestbook).
It was very hard at first since I did not have much programming background...uh...like...none.
However, after several weeks of sweat and blood I finally pestered people on the net enough to get a simple script working which was hacked together from all sorts of sources.
Over the years, I kept expanding my programming skills as I thought of more cool things I needed for my websites.
In the process I also ended up actually liking the programming stuff... eeeeeek... say good-bye to life for the next 5 years!
And now I no longer write much social theory... I spend all my time on mumbo jumbo programming crud.
See, are you sure you want to become a web programmer?
The point is that I learned the technical skills not to learn the technical skills themselves, but as a side effect of doing what I loved.
So my advice to you is to do something you love and involve the web in it.
The only way to get yourself through the utter frustrations of the evil computer is to have a purpose.
As for what things you should learn, which is the common related question, my answer is anything.
Web technologies change far too quickly for you to focus exclusively on any one technology.
Java shmava.
It will all come and go more quickly than the time it would take for you could learn every bit of syntax or API.
What is important is that you learn the medium of the web and how languages and technologies are built around it.
if you learn that, languages can come and go and you won't be bothered because you'll be able to pick them up as needed.
Choose any web technology and learn it not to learn the technology itself, but to learn how you apply the technology to the web.
You can be sure that when you understand the medium, any language or technology will make sense more quickly.
Anyway, I can go on for pages on this... in fact, I have.
Take a moment to cruise by the following URL
http://www.extropia.com/tutorials/devenv/
Selena Sol contributes to the JavaBoutique's Introduction to Java. Selena curently works for Barclays Capital in London, one of the leading global investment banks in Europe and has worked as a software developer for the National Center for Human Genome research, Microline Software, Neuron Data, and Electric Eye in Singapore. Selena is perhaps best-known for creating the Public Domain Web Script Archive (Extropia) and writing several books on Web Programming (Perl, CGI, Java).
Email: selena@extropia.com
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