General Web Development Advice

[Kerant]

Hey everyone.

I'm currently at University but working during the summer doing some Web development work for a mobile phone games company. Once I have graduated I hope to go into Web development full time as a career choice and I was just wondering if any Web developers could answer a few questions for me.

As a Web developer, do you do all of your own graphics your self or do you get somebody to do the graphics while you do the coding/structure/etc ?

I'm looking to find a few good web dev blogs, are there any you could recommend? Either general ones or PHP oriented.

Is there any good programs you could recommend for programming? (PHP, HTML, CSS, SQL etc.) I have just found 'SQLYog' and 'Programmer's Notepad' to be very useful - are there any others?

Is it better to work for a company doing web dev, or should I try to go it alone as a freelancer? + How is the best way to find work?

If anybody could help me out it would be fantastic, iIm really eager to learn as much as possible.

Thanks!:)

[rulian]

If you work in a company as part of a team you are usually hired to do a portion of the project or a specific job. which means that if you do the coding then you could very likely be working with one or more graphic designers and art directors and even other coders and project managers. They're roles are equally as important and I do find that having specified jobs does amount to better performances and better products (when it all works smoothly, which is also not 100% of the time)

If you can do design and development then I'm sure a company will be more then willing to save resources (like I was at my company) but it does help alot to work with people who are stronger at your weak points.

There are plently of PHP blogs on the net, this forum I tend to find very useful as well.

I stick to simple IDE's and text editors. I've tried many things for mysql UI but phpMyAdmin still kicks ass. There is perhaps the most popular simple text editor Notepad++, for IDE's you can look into PHPDeveloper 2008 or Dreamweaver (which some developers hate, others love, I'm the latter)

If you have no professional experience I would recommend you start out working for someone instead of yourself. You will be pushed to expand beyond your abilities, as well as learn basic but crucial business and work skills that simply help you be more organized and better preppared to work for yourself (which is a fancy way of saying you'll have an idea of what the hell your doing). I worked for a company and currently work for myself, and I tell you without that prior expeirience I would had trouble solving even the most essential elements of doing business, like project management, invoicing, estimating and keeping timelines and budgets.

Another thing is you will also learn quickly what you can do, what others are better at doing, and above all else, you will meet and make contacts!!! Without contacts you and your business go NOWHERE, doesnt mean they are all prospects, simply means that you will meet other people who will need your services and vice versa.

Give yourself the best chance to get a good foot foward and put yourself in the game. Working for yourself right of the start means you have no real perpective if what your doing is correct, if the direction your going is a good decision and so fourth. There is no amount of education that can substitute experience. I learn that the hard way and payed my dues.

Hope this helped

[Kerant]

If you work in a company as part of a team you are usually hired to do a portion of the project or a specific job. which means that if you do the coding then you could very likely be working with one or more graphic designers and art directors and even other coders and project managers. They're roles are equally as important and I do find that having specified jobs does amount to better performances and better products (when it all works smoothly, which is also not 100% of the time)

If you can do design and development then I'm sure a company will be more then willing to save resources (like I was at my company) but it does help alot to work with people who are stronger at your weak points.

There are plently of PHP blogs on the net, this forum I tend to find very useful as well.

I stick to simple IDE's and text editors. I've tried many things for mysql UI but phpMyAdmin still kicks ass. There is perhaps the most popular simple text editor Notepad++, for IDE's you can look into PHPDeveloper 2008 or Dreamweaver (which some developers hate, others love, I'm the latter)

If you have no professional experience I would recommend you start out working for someone instead of yourself. You will be pushed to expand beyond your abilities, as well as learn basic but crucial business and work skills that simply help you be more organized and better preppared to work for yourself (which is a fancy way of saying you'll have an idea of what the hell your doing). I worked for a company and currently work for myself, and I tell you without that prior expeirience I would had trouble solving even the most essential elements of doing business, like project management, invoicing, estimating and keeping timelines and budgets.

Another thing is you will also learn quickly what you can do, what others are better at doing, and above all else, you will meet and make contacts!!! Without contacts you and your business go NOWHERE, doesnt mean they are all prospects, simply means that you will meet other people who will need your services and vice versa.

Give yourself the best chance to get a good foot foward and put yourself in the game. Working for yourself right of the start means you have no real perpective if what your doing is correct, if the direction your going is a good decision and so fourth. There is no amount of education that can substitute experience. I learn that the hard way and payed my dues.

Hope this helped

Thanks for the reply, it cleared up most of my thoughts. :)

Just another quick question to add on to that.

How did you go about learning web dev originally? Did you just go through tutorials online/in books... or did you find being forced to learn in a work environment the best and most beneficial way?

[rulian]

There is no comparision I am about 500x bettter then I was when I started working, I learned so many different things not jsut about what I did but how it fit into an overall scheme of things. My abilities went from basic html/php/mysql to (without blowing my own horn here) advanced php-mysql-js-css and all that it emcompases (backends/frontends/ui/security/efficiency/speed/)
It was like transforming from a shooting bbguns at cans to a full blown special forces weapons-recon-demolitions officer.

In fact I like that, I'm forming a new group the 21st PHP Recon Group
Stay frosty, we're Oscar Mike