I Want To Build Websites: Page 1

Building websites is much harder than people think it is. Since I’ve been Internet Consulting for almost 10yrs now, I get questions about where to start in this industry. Recently, a childhood friend of mine, decided to leave the military, and get into the world of computing.

I have a few questions for you. I am taking some Ruby on Rail courses here at City College and have a stack of over 40 programming books. I guess I feel like a kid in a candy store, everything LOOKS good, but everything has a different flavor. I was getting into SQL when I heard about Perl, then Pyton and now Ruby. I’m utterly confused.

I have 1 year and 8 1/2 months left in the navy and Im out (after a total of 9). In that time, is learning a language feasable? And which one would do best, and how can i get started? I am not technically a novice…I know some XML, HTML and SQL (because of RoR and Apache). I also only have Mac’s in this house…all 3 new, OS X.

One last thing, Just today I bought 2 books (used from the local Point Loma library) on Flash 8 (for learning Animation and Interactivity) and Macromedia’s Director MX 2004 (the training from the source one). I assume (after purchasing them) that they were probably the wrong direction to head in. In your opinion, are they supercilious? If I want to be a Web developer, I should start else where right?

Gaining Experience

I don’t know what the job market will be like where you are. But RoR is a niche field of study. The place you live, may not have an abundance of Ruby jobs to apply to; so keep that in mind. Myself, I though ColdFusion was going to be “the next best thing”. Consequently, I missed the PHP and ASP wave. I cornered myself into knowing a language no-one really uses. That isn’t always a bad thing; there is value in knowing something most people don’t. However, you must be THE expert in that obscure subject. And becoming an expert, takes years. I’m good at ColdFusion, but it’s been years since I’ve actively used it. I’ve had trouble getting even entry level jobs doing it now. So all I can really do is putter around with it on my home computer.

IMO, college is a waste of time. I’ve been in position to hire people in the corporate world, and there is nothing college can teach you about the internet, that you couldn’t find in any bookstore or simply Googling it. If you were studying to be a Doctor, then obviously college is the only place to get that knowledge. The best way to learn web development is to solve a problem you have at home. For example, do you have a address book that needs organizing? If so, then figure out how to build something that does it. In fact, I just wrote a blog entry about this subject.

Reading your situation, I still say WordPress Blogs are your best option. All websites need graphics and code to work. Those are two, very different disciplines. If you create graphics, you’ll be studying color theory, and you’ll need expensive programs to make graphics with. Coding takes a more analytical mind, but the software is cheaper. If you’re not artistic, even simple graphics will be hard to make. If you’re not interested in optimizing, then coding will be tedium. It is left brain, right brain activity.

On the web, no matter how much time you spent preparing, or how accurate your estimate is, a client is gone with one mouse click. Why? There is no explanation. - Jeff Knooren

With a blog, there are plenty of themes available. The free themes may not be exactly what you want your site to look like, but the point is you don’t have to learn graphics. And the best part is someone else regularly updates the core base of code for security flaws and such. So, you’ll be able to use the community of developers for assistance with code, and graphics…

Page #1 | Page #2