Rebecca Said:

How long will it take me to become a Web Designer/Developer?

We Answered:

How long depends on a lot of things. It depends on who your employer is, how much you can get done on your own, and when you actually would consider yourself to really "be" a developer.

First off, distinguish between things like Designer and Developer. Web designers who know Dreamweaver and HTML are seemingly dime-a-dozen. You don't need to have any programming or logical skills to come up with web pages using Dreamweaver. Design skills, maybe-- like what makes a good layout, what color schemes work, how to design an intuitive interface, etc. But when it comes time to make dynamic web content, throw Dreamweaver out the window. You need to know the underlying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but Dreamweaver? Not at all.

If you want to be a developer, you need to know a programming language. Preferably several. PHP is good, although it's really commonplace right now, so you may find yourself in an ocean of other PHP developers. Perl, Python, C, C++, Ruby, Java, C#, etc, are all other languages that you might want to look into as well. Personally, I like Perl, but there's lots of options.

Also, you'll need some experience with a webserver, which means an ISP that allows scripting, which means paying for it (I don't know of any place that allows free scripting). Or, as an alternative, you can make your own webserver on your personal machine.

With most regular Windows machines, I dunno. Are there any good, free webserver applications that you can run on a Windows box? I know there are ones you've got to pay for. Anyway, I'd recommend Linux or Mac. Linux is a very high learning curve, so maybe Mac is a better choice. It's got a UNIX operating system underneath these days, which is similar to Linux, so it's a good place to start. I'm pretty sure you can easily set up an Apache webserver on a Mac (pretty much *the* standard webserver for non-Windows platroms, and free!). Then you can have your own webserver right on your own machine (very handy).

Anyway, you need to determine how much of a geek you are. Which languages you know, what operating systems you know, will explain to people pretty quickly how capable you are with computers on an uber-techy level. If you run your own Linux system, you're probably a geek. If your friends all have accounts on your Linux system, you have some of their sites hosted there, as well as your own email, etc, you're even more geeky. And if you've got some hobby project websites hosted on your Linux site to boot, you're way ahead. If you only run a Windows machine and have some experience with PHP and Dreamweaver, people probably won't be as impressed with your technical abilities. Anyway, figure out your level of geekdom, and keep in mind that generally, geeky = $$.

As for where to work, it's totally up to you. Where would you like to be in 5 years? 10 years? Is job security important to you? Is learning for your own benefit more important? Do you want to be your own boss, or manage a team of developers? That can help dictate what you should do.

Myself, I work as a web developer for a financial company. The stuff we do isn't necessarily "fun" (websites about financial data are pretty dry), but the job security is good, the perks are good, and the money's good. And there's some amount of room for advancement (not that I'm really after much myself).

Freelance work is obviously exactly the tradeoff that you might expect. The work isn't guaranteed, so it may have ups and downs, but you can pick what you work on, choose your schedule, choose your rates, and know that you're responsible for every piece of the puzzle (rather than relying on others to do certain things).

As a salary? Depends who you work for and what you know. Back when I was hired directly out of school in 1999, the going rate nationwide for developers out of school was $40k/year. When we did some research trying to hire an *experienced* developer a year or so ago, we found that many people were expecting more like $90k+. But that's partially related to environment too. Urban living costs on the east or west coasts of the US are higher, so salaries are likewise more. Salaries in the less urban middle-America would be lower, for the same jobs. And salaries for designers instead of developers? No idea.

Hope that helps!

And to Bizviz: JavaScript is most definitely a programming language. HTML isn't and CSS isn't, but JavaScript? Definitely. It just only runs on a browser platform, so it's more limited than most other languages.

DaveE