Endeavoring To Become A Web Developer

[indigoarthur 0]

Hello Friends,I'm at a pivotal time in my life. I'm 26 and trying to embark on a new career (*a* career, rather) in Web & Software development. I majored in Mathematics but unfortunately was not a very dedicated student at the time and am a quarter away from actually finishing my degree. The problem is I've been on "break" from school for a long while now, and a return although much desired is currently financially prohibitive. Even so, I have the technical background and all the right mental tools to succeed in my current endeavor. That which I lack, and have always lacked, is focus and motivation. This is why I post, in hopes of finding some amongst peers and momentary mentors potentially found in these forums.Like so many others, I started programming with QBASIC when I was 12. I was drawn to game development and to my great pride at that young age was able to figure out my own methods for smooth, flickerless animation in QB, culminating in a colorful Pong-style game. I dabbled in C/C++ but never consistently enough to get very far. Then I discovered online coding and the community of developers that I grew so fond of. Any fans of LPC (an interpreted C-like language) here? I've been developing in it for over a decade and am something of a master with it. Alas, even if I embraced the DGD platform it seems the industry opportunities are very limited. At the very least through it I was able to work with and learn from some brilliant coders around the world, not to mention learning the fundamentals of OOP and system design.Now I am focusing on learning: HTML/CSS/XML, PHP, SQL, JS, Java, and VBA. I have a solid foundation of programming technique and an excellent understanding of logical systems, mostly I lack specific experience with these industry tools and the little details that come with practicing them. As I mentioned, I've also been having a bit of a "focus block" lately.If you have read this far down I congratulate and thank you, and wish to conclude by saying that any advice or suggestions you might have as to my actualizing myself as a paid web & software developer would be profusely appreciated. Thanks very much.Regards

[salamangkero 0]

I would like to share with you my opinion/philosophy on the matter, and I hope I might be of some help to you.I, too, would like to do web application projects for money, however, I find that it would really be helpful to build a personal portfolio. Prospective clients would, at least, want to see a good sample of your works and, based on that, decide whether they'd want to avail of your services or not. I think it would be a rare organization that would be desperate enough to hire a web developer with no experience at all.Sure, I mean, you can always tell them what you know of HTML, CSS or Javascript but, in my opinion, nothing describes your abilities more than an actual website. I hope you are aware that, yes, you can avail of Xisto's web hosting service, among other things. Surely, that would be a good start, right? Try building a personal website, a blog or a free web service.Your initial efforts will not directly yield you money, but it will call in opportunities that do pay in cash. Not a bad strategy, if you ask me :DNow, about software development, there are some groups that do hire software engineers to build projects for them, but most of these would come to you from friends or FOAFs (friend of a friend) Generally, I think the same principle applies to software development: if you have a portfolio of your completed projects, you'll have a better chance of bagging projects.In any case, hope I was of help

[sonesay 7]

I have to agree with the previous post its the experience and quality of work you produce that matters. You can have a degree and paper but if your work is not of high standard you probably wont get hired over the next guy who has no degree yet his work could be outstanding. Its tough and I've been turned down many times myself because of lack of experience so the only way to remedy it is to work on the experience even if it means working for free. Its not really working for free in a sense because your working for yourself to better equip your self with experience on working on real projects. Find something you enjoy to work on and try and stay motivated. Just keep producing work and you'll get better thats when people will want to hire you. The other way is to know people and they can hook you up with jobs but just don't do what my friend did and take on a job he cannot do lol. Start small and work on building up big. Work hard and it will pay off. I know what you mean about not being able to focus I'm much like you but I noticed that when I do stay focused it does yield results. Make a thread on here with some work you did and we can discuss it maybe someone experience can even point out things we don't see.It seems like you did a lot of programing did you keep any of it? I produced alot of work myself during years of experimenting but most of it was not show quality. When you work on sometime think about producing it to a high enough standard where you can actually use in your portfolio and show employers.Thats all I can think of stay focused and try not get distracted.Looking forward to seeing some of your work here soon.

[Kubi 0]

Seems like more of an introduction to me.Welcome to Xisto, enjoy your stay.Moved --> Introductions