Chapter 5
In This Chapter
Finding out what makes a web development career a good one
Seeing how Utah teaches web development
Finding out how 1990s websites can help you today
Discovering what Lynda.com can do for your career
There are a million ways to become a web developer, and all of them are equally valid; “whatever works” is a maxim of web development, and of much else in life.
However, there’s a curve connecting the ways in which you might become a web developer to how many good or bad things happen in your web development career. More, and more solid, preparation makes more good things more likely to happen. Less, and less solid, preparation makes good things less likely to happen.
This chapter explains how to chart your path in web development — how to get as many different plus points on your side as possible, and how to steer around the areas where you might have a weakness, or at least not have a strength.
Use this chapter to get yourself started, and then watch and learn in your own career. There are many niches of skill, talent, and expertise in web development. As you add knowledge of such niches to your own background, keep a careful eye on who is well-regarded among your colleagues and who isn’t. Watch what the “stars” do and emulate it — in your own, genuine, positive way, not just to tick boxes. You’ll watch your impact, and your career, grow as you do.
So what is a “good” web development career versus a “bad” one?
That’s actually a hard question to answer. The whole field of web development is constantly changing — the names of the boxes we try to put people into, the size and shape of these boxes, and what it takes to be well-regarded in them don’t stay the same for long.
For instance, a few years ago, people might have said, “That web designer who knows all the latest HTML 2.0 tricks, is expert in Internet Explorer and Firefox, and is starting to learn CSS is really on the cutting edge.”
Today, to express a similarly positive opinion, people might say, “That visual designer who knows how to replace Flash video with HTML5 video, is expert in design for personal computers, tablets, and smartphones, and just wrote a textbook on CSS template libraries is really on the cutting edge.”
In Table 5-1, we list some aspects of what is usually considered a good web development career versus a less satisfying one. Feel free to take issue with our list, and to add your own plus and minus points. In web development, you can design your future just as you design a website — and you can experience the same uncertainty and randomness in how things will really turn out for both as well!
And if your colleagues and bosses are too slow, benighted, jealous, or insecure to recognize your good work? Sorry, their problem is your problem. You either need to find ways to get your colleagues and bosses on board with your contributions, or move to a new organization where people will understand and support what you’re trying to do.
Table 5-1 Good and Bad Career Points in Web Development
“Good” Career Points |
“Bad” Career Points |
Well-regarded by current colleagues |
Poorly regarded by current colleagues |
Boss understands and supports your work |
Boss doesn’t understand your work and doesn’t support you |
You feel like you get a lot of good work done in a day |
You feel like you’re not fully productive |
You accumulate experience with new technologies as you work |
You keep using the same old technologies over and over in your work |
You find time to learn and practice with new technologies and tools outside of work |
You don’t learn and practice with new technologies and tools outside of work |
You can show people your accomplishments in public-facing work or summarize it in easy-to-understand numbers |
You can’t show people your accomplishments in public-facing work or summarize it in easy-to-understand numbers |
You achieve internal recognition – meetings, newsletters, congratulatory emails, and other feedback about your contribution |
You don’t get internal recognition for your contributions |
You achieve external recognition — get positive attention or leadership in an external professional group relevant to your work, speak at a meeting or conference, and so on |
You don’t achieve external recognition |
You accumulate both agency and in-house organizational experience as you progress |
You feel stuck in a boring job in a non-web development organization — or you feel like you’ve been on the agency side too long and no longer understand the client’s point of view |
Your salary increases as you go on |
Your salary stays the same or regresses as you go on |
You hold jobs for two or three years and then move on, and at least somewhat up, even if the new job is in the same organization |
You hold jobs for less than two years, or more than four, without moving either on or up |
The state of Utah has its own take on web development. That state actually administers a course, Web Development 1, that seeks to teach the basics of web development.
The look and feel of the site is very 1990s, and most of the detailed, in-depth content is hosted in PDFs. Most modern websites put important content in web pages and use PDFs only for pieces which are targeted for printed distribution.
The fascinating thing about this course is the fact that it’s addressed to high schoolers, grades 10-12, but it covers so much of what you need to know to have a lifelong career as a web developer. Check out the course’s home page at www.schools.utah.gov/ate/Skills/it/893.htm, as shown in Figure 5-1, to learn more.
Many sites with key information for web developers were developed in the mid-1990s, when the web was new and people were actively exploring how to get the most out of it. The iconic World Wide Web (W3C) consortium website, which contains all the key information about web standards plus discussion, was developed during this time. Visit www.w3.org to go back to the founding days for most of the standards we use all the time in web development.
The Utah course divides web development learning into standards — goals for students to reach — objectives, which are specific sub-goals within the standards; and indicators, or proof points that the objectives are being met. The PDF that has this supporting information is shown in Figure 5-2.You can find it at www.schools.utah.gov/cte/documents/it/standards/WebDevelopment.pdf.
If you don’t know the information in the Utah curriculum, you should learn it! Much of the information is available on Wikipedia, www.w3.org, and through web searches. Other skills described in the curriculum come with a moderate amount of practice, as you’ll do on your portfolio site and on web development projects.
Here are the standards — the top-level goals — for this course, along with a summary of the objectives:
Some of the tools mentioned in this curriculum, such as meta tags and iframes, are less used today than they were several years ago. However, “old school” web developers will bring them up in conversation, and “old school” websites that you’re maintaining or updating will have them, so it’s good to know what they are and how they’re used.
There is a whole wide range of things to know for a web development career beyond the topics described here. However, you won’t go far wrong by starting with a curriculum like the one described here. After you have the basics, you can branch out into all the new and exciting things that web development has to offer.
Lynda.com is a fantastic training resource for web development, with strong roots in the past, but also relentlessly up-to-date. The topics in the Utah training described in the preceding section are kind of the boilerplate of web design. Lynda.com includes a lot of the spicy stuff, in an easy-to-grasp format.
Lynda.com was founded in 1995, when web development was still quite new. Lynda.com specialized in niche, but important, topics such as using HTML and CSS with different browsers. It grew into a comprehensive site that costs $25 a month for a regular membership that gives you access to all its resources, as of this writing.
Lynda.com offers certification in many topics — a very valuable resource in some instances because it proves you have gone the extra mile to really prepare yourself in a given area. Because Lynda.com is well-known and well-regarded, certifications from this site really mean something to employers and peers. (Even if employers aren’t familiar with Lynda.com initially, a little investigation into what the certification means will leave them impressed.)
Lynda.com has close to 2,000 training courses and covers all experience levels, with strong instructors and excellent multimedia quality. You can learn everything you need to know about most topics from Lynda.com (www.lynda.com).
Figure 5-3 shows the web development home page of Lynda.com, which is really the core expertise of the site. Note that the page includes programming using languages such as PHP and MySQL as well as web development standards like HTML and CSS.
Reviewing some of the most popular topics on Lynda.com at this writing gives insights into where the mainstream of web development is today: