[dasher]

For web dev, you need to know Javascript, HTML, CSS, sql and ONE OF the following:

PHP, Python, ASP.net, Ruby

Knowing more than one serverside language is largely redundant, some technologies are better in some areas, but for a novice to intermediate programmer, just one is fine. Even then, don't learn languages 'just because', have a specific problem that requires you to learn a new language.

PHP probably has the best overall support structure (resources, frameworks, userbase, etc) if you think you'll be primarily self-taught/directed. If you're taking a course then just learn and use whatever serverside language they teach you.

(10-10-2013 06:13 AM)Andy_B Wrote:  

3. Programming. From what I've ascertained, for web development, I need to learn Javascript, PHP, Python, ASP.NET, Java and maybe Perl. For app development, I'll need Java and Objective C.

[RexImperator]

I can program in C but I wouldn't call myself great at it. Any advice on which direction I might want to turn to make myself more marketable?

[scandibro]

I'm finding a lot of conflicting advice on which language to learn (first).

Some say learn PHP because so many CMS work with that. Others say skip straight to Ruby, you say Python etc.

[EsperZebrah]

(10-10-2013 02:11 PM)scandibro Wrote:  

I'm finding a lot of conflicting advice on which language to learn (first).

Some say learn PHP because so many CMS work with that. Others say skip straight to Ruby, you say Python etc.

Yes, if you want to customize the most popular CMS like Drupal and Wordpress you will need to learn php. The type of work you choose may define the language you have to learn.

It's hard to say which language is best to learn first but here is a list of things to consider before making a choice.

* How easy is it to read. (developers read more code then write)
* What is the quality of the documentation
* How big and friendly is the community
* How many jobs are available in your area and at the locations you may want to travel/move to.
* Can you work remotely
* What is the salary/pay like
* In how many industries can the language be used (web, finance, science, game, mobile, other types of hardware etc.)
* Which niche will you choose as the main focus for the language
* how long has the language been around and is it gaining or decreasing popularity
* what is the quality of tools and libraries available
* how long does it take to be good enough with the language to get a job in your chosen niche
* How fun is to work with the language.

In my opinion, out of the popular languages, Ruby and Python are some of the easiest to read.
Python's documentation for the popular libraries and frameworks are usually pretty good (django free documentation is excellent). Python community is large and friendly enough but I's possible others like the node.js (back end server side & modern javascript) community to be more enthusiastic. According to indeed.com job trends for Python and PHP in US are around the same amount but there are a lot more jobs for javascript. Python is a more general purpose language then PHP, Javascript and even ruby (more non web jobs for python then ruby). You can branch out to different fields with python but not as much with the other popular languages I mentioned. Unfortunately I do not know a way to find out supply and demand of jobs but I believe there are more Javascript work spread around the globe then Python and Ruby. It's possible that Python is not the best choice if you want location flexibility. You may still be able to create your own python jobs out side of tech cities though (freelancer, your own business etc) or may be lucky to find a good remote job.
It's the popular opinion that when compared to python and ruby, PHP is known to be messy to work with & while javascript has a nasty history, things seems have improved a lot

If I was new to programming and wanted to choose a first language for web development I would choose front end javascript. Depending on who is hiring I think you can get away with not learning databases (SQL) and a lot of server side stuff (unix commands & some devops) if you start with front end javascript first. However, you still have to learn HTML, CSS, photoshop and graphic design basics. You can learn more about back end after you have good front end skills. Javascript is growing and you can use it to build mobile apps, "real time" server applications, games and some people are trying to stick it in hardware.

I chose python because it's a pleasure to read, work with and it has a mature community and libraries. I also wanted a language environment that I could build my own web businesses but also work with non web tech stuff. However, If you choose python & django, php, ruby, etc for web development, it's likely that you will want/need to learn javascript eventually. Two out of the top 10 job trends (jQuery & HTML5) on Indeed are Javascript technologies.

You will need some front end and back end skills to be able to build a data driven website on your own but it's possible to do it all with Javascript today.

I hope the formating of this post is clear enough.

[scandibro]

Thanks for the answer EsperZebrah. I should probably add that I'm not looking for a 9-5 job as such. Rather I would like to learn how to make my own software products be they Wordpress plugins, real web startups or apps for various niches (seo and finance would be two). Of course, knowing how to code is a nice fallback strategy if I end up 40 and broke or need some freelance income quickly.

Just by browsing Elance I see far, far more PHP jobs than other languages. However, my understanding is that PHP has A LOT of indian/philipines competition and most of the jobs on Elance are probably just very simple small script projects.

Front end is not really my interest, I don't have the artistic talent, but I understand how Javascript is very useful. HTML and CSS I already know ok.

The thing is, I can pretty easily see the potential for my own projects from learning PHP, but I would like to eventually join or create a real web startup. To my understanding, Ruby would be the best choice for that. On the other hand, there's a massive market for Wordpress solutions which speaks to PHP.

I suppose I could learn both. Python has been recommended before by other people to make tools easily, but how much more difficult is Ruby and does it have limitations compared to Python?

Another thing is, if PHP has messy code as you say, will it make it more difficult to learn Python/Ruby?

[paninaro]

This article made its rounds on the internet a while ago and confirmed some of my own opinions about PHP:
http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php...ad-design/

Personally, I like frameworks where there is some product management behind it so it's coherent. Sometimes (but not always), open-source projects end up as a big mishmash because everyone contributes, but not with an overarching via to if the feature they added is consistent with the methodology in that framework. Sometimes it can be items as simple as if a function should return 0 or 1 or Null or -1 for failure -- inconsistency is a massive pain when you're trying to use these functions.

But I guess that's more of a philosophical discussion. Just pick what will meet your goals. If you're looking for freelance jobs, and you see a lot of PHP jobs, then go for that.

Another approach is to pick a niche where few know it well. One example is PhoneGap, and another is ColdFusion. PhoneGap is on the up and up since Adobe bought it, and there are very few people out there who know it well. ColdFusion has lost popularity, but I bet there are a lot of corporate customers out there with legacy apps that need to be maintained, and will pay a pretty penny for it.

[Cattle Rustler]

Just a question out there: What about COBOL?

Everyone keeps bashing it but my professor says to learn it because
1 - many large corporations use it
2 - They have legacy systems
3 - many people who know COBOL are retiring
4 - companies have been asking him to teach it (IBM in particular)

My uni only had one COBOL course but now they have two.

[RichieP]

(10-12-2013 10:15 AM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

Just a question out there: What about COBOL?

Everyone keeps bashing it but my professor says to learn it because
1 - many large corporations use it
2 - They have legacy systems
3 - many people who know COBOL are retiring
4 - companies have been asking him to teach it (IBM in particular)

My uni only had one COBOL course but now they have two.

Two good threads on the topic:

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/que...h-learning


http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/08...where.html

From wht I can gather:

-yes it could be lucrative given the supply/demand of programmers, play your cards right you could land a well-paying job
-you'd be mainly doing legacy/maintenance work on back-office applications - logistics, payroll systems, food delivery systems, banks finance stuff (but the stodgy organisational stuff, not the money-making stuff like trading algorithms etc).

I like some of the comments on that second piece:

"...one of the reasons I accepted to work on this project is because I believe I'm somehow helping COBOL to die."

" All of them [the programmers] doing COBOL for 20 years, some of them don't know how to use a mouse "

and also the comment about hiding it on your CV if you actually want a job in Silicon valley, hehe

[Architekt]

Any of you guys had a play with Google Go? It seems like a really useful/powerful language, but I've never encountered anyone who's actually used it

Also, making a move learning Python and Ruby. Done a little Python in the past, but never really cared for it. Didn't realise it was so popular

[The Great Basilisk]

Php(+drupal+wordpress)/javascript/html/css is the easiest stack i think. If you are good at those, you will always find a job.

[frenchcorporation]

An update;

Ive been a web developer for a shade under 6 months and I've been offered (and accepted) another job with more responsibility , and the pay is a 33% increase, not including bonuses and other perks

It was between me and another guy, and what swung it was the side projects that swung it for me, so I'm very pleased that I made myself keep working on it

There was also an online coding test
Ive dabbled with coding tests before but never stuck to them, so ill be working on those from now on


The classic coding test is the "fizzbuzz" test, which is described on another website as follows:

Quote:

The "Fizz-Buzz test" is an interview question designed to help filter out the 99.5% of programming job candidates who can't seem to program their way out of a wet paper bag. The text of the programming assignment is as follows:
"Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”."

a couple of sites with programming tests

http://codingbat.com/python - some python specific tests on there


http://projecteuler.net/problems - a very extensive set of programming problems, at least 100, increasing in difficulty

[BLarsen]

What did your old job have you doing when you first started? Customer support? Refactoring? Getting mentored?

What was your level of responsibility when you took the new position?

How did you get new job? Directly applied? Recruiter?

[frenchcorporation]

(12-20-2013 04:39 PM)BLarsen Wrote:  

What did your old job have you doing when you first started? Customer support? Refactoring? Getting mentored?

What was your level of responsibility when you took the new position?

How did you get new job? Directly applied? Recruiter?

the first couple weeks i was getting up to speed with the codebase, then from that point I was doing proper work,

building new features for , and debugging the main application
some customer support for the main application
suggesting my own ideas and producing them

created an internal application for administration as well

When I took the new job I was asking for everything they had to throw at me, so I could prove myself, I hadn't risen in rank or anything, but I was much more self-sufficient

Got the new job by speculatively applying via a recruiter on a job site, Ive been looking at job postings from when i started, not becuase I was looking to leave, but just to keep tabs on trends, in terms of what other companies were looking for.

The new company got back to me very quickly, the turnaround time from applying to being offered the job was less than 2 weeks

[pitt]

Impressive

[TravellerJay]

Hey Frenchcorporation, I want to hear from you, how the job is going so far and if you do have more info to share with us, thanks

[invictusiii]

I work with PHP and Javascript mostly because I picked up PHP around my senior year of highschool. Read a magazine article on how to create web pages that change dynamically and can read from a database. This was in 2001 and PHP has come a very long way since then. There is still a lot of shitty code out there though. A lot of HTML pages with blocks of PHP sprinkled it. This is considered bad practice nowadays. There is an effort to help newer devs stick to industry best-practices and cleaner code. Check out http://www.phptherightway.com

There are also a lot of Indian/Pakistani programmers working for cheap that make it hard to freelance but if your try hard enough you can find clients that are smart enough to pay for quality work instead of cheap shit from fiverr or elance.

For those who want to work remotely, there is a great site that only posts remote tech related jobs. https://weworkremotely.com/

[frenchcorporation]

(03-04-2014 01:36 PM)TravellerJay Wrote:  

Hey Frenchcorporation, I want to hear from you, how the job is going so far and if you do have more info to share with us, thanks

Well...

Ive got a few things to say , so I'll say them in no particular order

Firstly,Ive been at the new company for a little over two months. During the interview, I asked how many other people developed the product.. and from the response I was given the impression there were multiple developers. There were not. There was just one, and he was leaving, hence them hiring me.

So Im currently the lead/sole developer of the web application, & I have 8 months commercial experience. I am dealing with everything thrown at me, but ..my boss took a big risk on hiring me as a sole developer with my level of experience. I mean, I've proved his judgement to be spot on, but still.

The web application is a python/django app, with a mysql database, running on amazon web services.

I wanted a big challenge, & I've definitely been handed one. The learning curve that was flattening out at the last job has suddenly steepened again, and I am pleased about that part of the situation.

As I'm the sole developer, as well as the coding side of things, I'm also handling everything else, from the server configuration (nginx/gunicorn etc), to the maintaining of the database, database backups .. everything basically.

Oh yeah, and all the unit tests for the product are out of date. I identified this as a huge issue on day one, and was essentially told "yeah we know, but we need to push new features". The product has approx 40,000 lines of code, and this in in python, which is a very succinct language.

Huge red flag. Even on my side projects, I have loads of tests.

So broadly speaking, the new technologies ive learnt and am still learning are

*linux server configuration (aws, nginx, gunicorn)
*git source control , was using mercurial at last job, and use mercurial for sid eprojects
* mysql database configuration , was using postgres at last job

Im doing a lot of learning and work outside of my job hours, just to keep on top of things, and to keep learning.

As well as working on python side projects,Ive recently started learning C. This is because Id like to take my finance skills into the financial/quant development sector, and London would be the perfect place for that.

I get recruiters calling me from time to time and I don't even have a LinkedIn or anything like that. From speaking to a few of them and looking at job sites, Im pretty confident I'll be able to make the transition into the financial software development industry, in my next job, or the one after that. Theres still plenty room for improvement (in terms of my income) in the web development area so if its the job after next, I'm not too fussed.

And I should reiterate, I'm putting in a serious amount of work to improve my skill. Im staying late after work for hours until the cleaners kick me out to lock up, I'm turning up early, Im reading everything I can get my hands on (got plenty of pdfs i still need to read through )..& Im not doing this for my boss, Im doing it for me.

And its paying off.

[TravellerJay]

(03-07-2014 07:22 PM)frenchcorporation Wrote:  

(03-04-2014 01:36 PM)TravellerJay Wrote:  

Hey Frenchcorporation, I want to hear from you, how the job is going so far and if you do have more info to share with us, thanks

Well...

Ive got a few things to say , so I'll say them in no particular order

Firstly,Ive been at the new company for a little over two months. During the interview, I asked how many other people developed the product.. and from the response I was given the impression there were multiple developers. There were not. There was just one, and he was leaving, hence them hiring me.

So Im currently the lead/sole developer of the web application, & I have 8 months commercial experience. I am dealing with everything thrown at me, but ..my boss took a big risk on hiring me as a sole developer with my level of experience. I mean, I've proved his judgement to be spot on, but still.

The web application is a python/django app, with a mysql database, running on amazon web services.

I wanted a big challenge, & I've definitely been handed one. The learning curve that was flattening out at the last job has suddenly steepened again, and I am pleased about that part of the situation.

As I'm the sole developer, as well as the coding side of things, I'm also handling everything else, from the server configuration (nginx/gunicorn etc), to the maintaining of the database, database backups .. everything basically.

Oh yeah, and all the unit tests for the product are out of date. I identified this as a huge issue on day one, and was essentially told "yeah we know, but we need to push new features". The product has approx 40,000 lines of code, and this in in python, which is a very succinct language.

Huge red flag. Even on my side projects, I have loads of tests.

So broadly speaking, the new technologies ive learnt and am still learning are

*linux server configuration (aws, nginx, gunicorn)
*git source control , was using mercurial at last job, and use mercurial for sid eprojects
* mysql database configuration , was using postgres at last job

Im doing a lot of learning and work outside of my job hours, just to keep on top of things, and to keep learning.

As well as working on python side projects,Ive recently started learning C. This is because Id like to take my finance skills into the financial/quant development sector, and London would be the perfect place for that.

I get recruiters calling me from time to time and I don't even have a LinkedIn or anything like that. From speaking to a few of them and looking at job sites, Im pretty confident I'll be able to make the transition into the financial software development industry, in my next job, or the one after that. Theres still plenty room for improvement (in terms of my income) in the web development area so if its the job after next, I'm not too fussed.

And I should reiterate, I'm putting in a serious amount of work to improve my skill. Im staying late after work for hours until the cleaners kick me out to lock up, I'm turning up early, Im reading everything I can get my hands on (got plenty of pdfs i still need to read through )..& Im not doing this for my boss, Im doing it for me.

And its paying off.

Great to hear from you mate! This is really inspirational, for someone like me starting programming, I am not even newbie but working on, studying. One day I will be like you frenchcorporation, junior and wanting to take the whole world

thanks for this thread, really

[TravellerJay]

(03-04-2014 02:57 PM)invictusiii Wrote:  

I work with PHP and Javascript mostly because I picked up PHP around my senior year of highschool. Read a magazine article on how to create web pages that change dynamically and can read from a database. This was in 2001 and PHP has come a very long way since then. There is still a lot of shitty code out there though. A lot of HTML pages with blocks of PHP sprinkled it. This is considered bad practice nowadays. There is an effort to help newer devs stick to industry best-practices and cleaner code. Check out http://www.phptherightway.com

There are also a lot of Indian/Pakistani programmers working for cheap that make it hard to freelance but if your try hard enough you can find clients that are smart enough to pay for quality work instead of cheap shit from fiverr or elance.

For those who want to work remotely, there is a great site that only posts remote tech related jobs. https://weworkremotely.com/

Great link man, thanks a lot

[invictusiii]

(03-10-2014 11:16 AM)TravellerJay Wrote:  

(03-04-2014 02:57 PM)invictusiii Wrote:  

I work with PHP and Javascript mostly because I picked up PHP around my senior year of highschool. Read a magazine article on how to create web pages that change dynamically and can read from a database. This was in 2001 and PHP has come a very long way since then. There is still a lot of shitty code out there though. A lot of HTML pages with blocks of PHP sprinkled it. This is considered bad practice nowadays. There is an effort to help newer devs stick to industry best-practices and cleaner code. Check out http://www.phptherightway.com

There are also a lot of Indian/Pakistani programmers working for cheap that make it hard to freelance but if your try hard enough you can find clients that are smart enough to pay for quality work instead of cheap shit from fiverr or elance.

For those who want to work remotely, there is a great site that only posts remote tech related jobs. https://weworkremotely.com/

Great link man, thanks a lot

No problem.

[TravellerJay]

I have been studying Python as FC recommended and all I can say is that there are no limits and we all should aim to the stars.

I dont have too much time and frankly after finishing I dont have too much energy and weekends are me time
But scraping one hr here and there I am making some progress to learn the syntax. If you google python tutorials and or the wiki python you will find very good resources. Trouble is finding the time to read it all and apply it all.
But for the moment, I dont have anything else to do so studying and improving.

thanks

[Patriarch]

Just started Android app development with Treehouse. I almost can't believe I am enjoying it.

[BLarsen]

I'm about 5 months into my process and I'm going the Ruby on Rails route.

Had my first interview yesterday and HOLY SHIT did I bomb. Luckily it was only a phone interview because if I had gone to their office (1.5 hour drive) I would have been seriously pissed on top of the ego-destroying bitch slap the interview gave me.

Basically someone didn't read my resume and I got into an interview for a mid-level developer when I'm looking for a junior developer job. You can imagine how that went.

But like frenchcorporation said, treat the first round of interviews as a fact-gathering mission...and I definitely gathered some facts.

[frenchcorporation]

(03-20-2014 09:21 PM)BLarsen Wrote:  

I'm about 5 months into my process and I'm going the Ruby on Rails route.

Had my first interview yesterday and HOLY SHIT did I bomb. Luckily it was only a phone interview because if I had gone to their office (1.5 hour drive) I would have been seriously pissed on top of the ego-destroying bitch slap the interview gave me.

Basically someone didn't read my resume and I got into an interview for a mid-level developer when I'm looking for a junior developer job. You can imagine how that went.

But like frenchcorporation said, treat the first round of interviews as a fact-gathering mission...and I definitely gathered some facts.

good stuff, try to get post-interview feedback from them if you haven't already

found a post that echoes my initial post, the author details a similar path with python/django, and ruby/rails (its not me, honest)
http://peteh.me/posts/from-zero-to-summe...ne-months/

[Marmite]

Do you recommend learning Python 2.7, or Python 3.3?

Also, what kind of typing speed would you need to work as a programmer?