What do I need to learn to become a web developer?

[newbiewebdev]

Hello, I am totally new to web design, but I would like to know if anyone would be willing to give me information on:
1. What programs I will eventually need to learn to become a successful web developer.
2. Can you become a self taught web developer or does one need to go to school for it.
3. What made you become interested in web development?

The programs that I currently have are:
Dreamweaver MX (which i've never used)
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (i'm an almost advanced user)
Adobe Photoshop Cs (never used)
Adobe Illustrator 7.0 (never used)

Thanks in advance for all of the advice and input!!!!!

[ray326]

1. Being a successful web developer is not dependent on any particular development software. You need to know business, visual design, core technology (HTTP, HTML, CSS, DOM, Javascript), one or more languages for server programming (ASP, PSP, Perl, C, Java, VBScript, Python, Tcl, etc.), networking (TCP/IP, routers, firewalls), ... I'm sure other folks will take over where I leave off.

2. You can definitely be self taught. Many college courses in this area are bad or flat wrong. There are some good, week long, lab-type courses taught by some of the training companies.

3. The drugs and the groupies.

[Scottcamp]

Originally posted by ray326 Being a successful web developer is not dependent on any particular development software. You need to know business, visual design, core technology (HTTP, HTML, CSS, DOM, Javascript), one or more languages for server programming (ASP, PSP, Perl, C, Java, VBScript, Python, Tcl, etc.), networking (TCP/IP, routers, firewalls), ...

He is right about that. I'm no expert, but I like doing web design.

These programs You have are powerful tools to use. I use Dreamweaver mx and Photoshop cs. But these tools do not make web pages...you do. learn the language - preferably by code-- not junk drag 'n' drop. You will understand the how to's and why's behind the page that way.

[Stephen Philbin]

Using server side languages without knowing what you are doing is one of the fastest ways of screwing your site up you can possibly use. If the jigsawed pieces of code don't all colapse in on themselves, you'll still have most likely left multiple security holes on each page for others to play on your site with. Far too many "professional developers" haven't got a clue what they're doing. Don't become one of them.

I've been learning this stuff almost every day for 16 months now, I'm still not up to what I would consider an acceptable standard yet, let alone a "professional" standard. Whilst many others just grab an illegal copy of Dreamweaver and astonishingly become "profesiional webmasters" that can not only build "top websites that are totally secure because all the source is encrypted" and somehow instantly obtain all server maintainance knowledge they'd ever need and will never need to ever read about it! Naturally this is an absurd notion and the main source of learning web dev for such people are movies such as "Jumpin' Jack Flash", Short Circuit" and perhaps "Hackers".

[Poegle]

I learnt the majority of what i know between may-september. Due to college I didnt learn much more. I intend to do now seen as im on Christmas holidays and have more time. I didnt use dreamweaver or frontpage, I used a book which was teaching me old things but got me into it. Then I went onto www.htmlgoodies.com which Mr Herer pointed me to, then onto other sites like www.w3c.org, www.alistapart.com. I dont know alot but I know enough to make sites, which are xhtml 1.1 valid. I have no artistic talent as many of others might of seen on some of the sites ive made such as my homepage im working on now:

www.vagusnet.com/John/John/my/index.html

yet again not alot of pictures as im utter trollop when it comes to making images, the only picture on there was one I made..not very arty.

The only things I know are: HTMl,XHTML, and CSS. I hated learning javascript couldnt get it in as im not a very good learner especially with that, and i started learning php, which i stopped because of college but shall try to return to it these few weeks off.

The course im doing at college has a section in next term after christmas of "making websites" which is going to be.....using frontpage.
I laughed at one of my teachers when he said this to a fellow student:
"Chris your pretty good at making things in publisher...have you ever thought about being a proffesional web developer?" :rolleyes:
I have said to my teacher that I will make mine using notepad, im not going to use frontpage. So going to a course might not be the best idea. Ive learnt alot through Mr Herer pointing me in the right directions of whats what, online tutorials like the ones mentioned above, and other peoples posts on here.

So I would say learn it off sites that teach you the correct things rather than going to a course that teaches you old things, or even worse in dreamweaver or frontpage.

Its fun once you get to the stage of being able to figure problems out when your page is going all wrong, but at the same time can be annoying.

Hope you find it fun if you decide to go through with it.

[Stephen Philbin]

Note though that htmlgoodies.com does not teach standards compliant techniques wich should really be the technique of preference. It is however good to see both sides of things. The informal style of the tutorials there is great for getting you started without blinding you with terminology. It does have a fair share of proprietary code and was (for the most part) written long ago.

Your final reference should always be the w3c. It's fiercely formal and dry, but is the best reference you can find for your core web dev knowledge.

www.w3schools.org is also good. It's a handy reference list, but is very sparse on detail.