Web Development & Web Technologies

How to start your career in Web Development & Web Technologies

Usually we publish articles that are of interest only to the “electronics” community. However today I thought of publishing an article about career opportunities in Web Development & Web Technologies. The reason being the wide opportunities it provides for fresh engineers & graduates. “Cloud Computing” is making a wave and plenty of new job opportunities are posted every week in this area. “Web Development” is a general term which can be used in connection with anything that is related to web & internet. “Web Technologies” refers to technologies that are used to build applications for the web. Examples of technologies used in web may range into many:- 

1)  Server side languages like PHP, ASP.NET, JSP, Phyton, Ruby

 2) Browser side scripting languages like Javascript, JQuery 

3) User interface development using HTML/CSS in combination with browser side scripting languages.

Who all can seek a career in Web Development?

Literally any one can! The job of a web developer is that of a programmer who can write efficient codes in various languages used for the web. “Becoming a good programmer” doesn’t actually need any formal education. You just need to decide on which language you want to learn, buy a couple of books for that language, read tutorials on internet & then try your hands on coding. You need to write lots of code yourself, learn by developing simple & small applications initially & then move up yourself to big & challenging applications. That is the only way you can become a good programmer. However having a formal education in the following streams will definitely make your job easier –  graduation in mathematics, engineering in computer sciences & electronics, graduation in computer sciences. The reason is these courses teach basics of programming as part of their curriculum.  But at the same time any one can become a good programmer by learning themselves. All you need is a taste for logic & programs.

How to begin your career in Web Development?

Very simple – Start learning. First of all decide which language you want to learn. Most people choose open source languages like PHP, Python etc because of the immense resource available over web for self learning. Some others choose ASP.NET & similar others. The choice can be personal for some people. However in my opinion, choose the field you have maximum interest. For example:- choosing PHP as language & MySql as database will help you to work with a range of open source applications likeWordPress (a content management system), Magento (a shoppingcart building software ) and many other open source applications like Joomla, Opencart etc. Choosing Phython as language & PostgreSql as database will help you to work with one of the most promising Open Source ERP software named OpenERP.

Begin your Learning curve

Once you choose the technologies, then its just a matter of buying books & experimenting yourself.  I recommend you to read a series of articles written by DollarFry team if you are interesting in PHP & MySql.

1) How Freshers & Beginners in PHP can land a great first job - This article speaks in general about the opportunities for a career in PHP. It also explains what all you should learn and focus to carve a good career in web development using PHP

2) Understanding Web Technologies:- HTML/CSS -JQuery/Javascript-Ajax-PHP & MySql  -  This article can be consudered as the first chapter of your learning curve. It combines all languages used in PHP based web development (like HTML/CSS, Jquery, Ajax, PHP & MySql as database) into a single example so that you can understand the basic concepts very easily. A must read for everyone interested in PHP.

Similarly Google has a great education material when it comes to Python. You can learn all the basics very easily from Googles tutorial.

 I hope you have got a basic idea about the career in web development. If you have any queries, please publish in our comments section.