Why web development?

[Alex]

How and why did you get involved with web development, and what is it to you? Is it a hobby, a career, a side-job or what?

 

My Answer:

 

For me web development is more of a hobby than anything else at the moment, or perhaps an obsession would be more fitting. I think originally the reason I got interested in web development is because on a forum that my friend owned there was a PHP section, and I guess I was uncomfortable with them knowing something I didn't It started out as something small, but it escalated quickly and became somewhat of an obsession.

 

Because I started web development, and programming in general, at such a young age I really had a lot of time to invest in studying it as I didn't have anything too time-consuming on my schedule like a job, or school (as it was extremely easy at this point). It started out as just making some cool stuff, and even now it's not really much more than a hobby. I do some freelancing here and there, but it's nothing serious and I'm not too interested in it currently.

 

I haven't really decided if web development or programming is ever going to play a bigger role than just a hobby in my life. Because I'm younger than the average user here on PHP Freaks I haven't made an absolute decision on what career path I'm going to take is, but it's time for me to start getting serious about my future. Currently I'm a junior in high school which means college is right around the corner. Up until recently I haven't even really considered an actually career in web development/programming just because it felt like more of a leisure time activity. But now computer science is definitely a candidate for my major in college.

 

--

 

What about you?

[waynew]

I was in college doing a course on applications development. However, they only thought us .jsp, and even at that, it was very basic stuff. I got into PHP about a year and a half ago because I felt as if PHP was the language to learn for web development. Started learning more and more until finally I started getting some freelance work. Since then, I feel as is I've improved a lot. Only problem at the moment is that I have so much projects on my plate, that I don't get to sit back and just learn some extra stuff - even though that doesn't sound like too much of a complaint, seeing as I'm getting business.

[Daniel0]

When I was I think like 9 or 10 years old my parents got me some sort of computer magazine subscription. They started this HTML tutorial series. I had a PS1 and at that time I thought that cheat codes were damn cool. You know, you could be invincible, have infinite ammo and shit. Anyways, I started collecting cheat codes for the games I owned and making some probably hideously looking piece of shit "website" on our computer. You know with <blink>, <marquee>, animated GIFs and obnoxious Javascript effects I pasted in but had no idea how worked.

 

I had noticed that on the internet, some webpages had things like index.php?foo=bar or wicked_stuff.asp?hello=world. I thought that looked pretty cool so I wanted to name my local HTML files that. The problem was just that Windows complained when I tried putting question marks in filenames, so I was like WTF? Then I wanted to know what was going on and how the hell they managed to name their files like that.

 

Eventually I found out you could use something called PHP and the question mark thing wasn't actually part of the filename. I would imagine I then started making a lot of horribly crafted scripts that I thought were "the shit" and that I was pretty cool because I was a "programmer".

 

That's probably the lamest story ever, but it's true nonetheless.

[waynew]

Not lame at all. We all started from absolute shit. That's what makes it good to look back now and realise the progress you've made. Imagine 5 years from now? We'll all be smirking at how bad we were or at how good we thought we were.

[Alex]

Not lame, but the part with trying to name files with question marks was hilarious.

 

I remember long before I was too interested in programming I attempted to do some small websites, designs and stuff with photoshop. I had like no experience so I thought all these divs and stuff were made primarily with background images. Trying to put together body backgrounds with header and footer background images perfectly so they actually lined up, which was hard considering the only thing I knew how to do was to manually put transparent margins on the actual images..

[trq]

Well, back in the day (probably around 99) after being in a band for many years I started getting more and more into production and eventually got into programming & producing experimental electronic stuff (similar to Aphex / Squarepusher).

 

Anyway, evidently I stumbled upon a d&b review site that was reviewing unsigned artists. I didn't much like d&b but decided Id come up with a track fro review. It was well received so I wrote more, then more, and more. Eventually I got back into my old habits and eventually my tracks started being rejected for being "too experimental" & "not drum and base enough".

 

I thought fuck it, I'll make one of these sites myself. So I did, initially in asp then again in python. I already had a little experience with html from preparing our bands sites plus my own 'hepburnenthorpe' sites. I probably spent 18 months or so working on this site but never did get around to launching it and by then, I was pretty much over the electronic music itch & now considered programming my hobby.

 

I'm not real sure when I started using PHP but it was probably around 2004.

 

Now days I work full time a the only web analyst programmer for a large publishing company. I'm also the (mostly) sys admin and occasional php hacker for a large cms project a friend of mine co-founded a few years back. We currently have over 800 clients hosted on our application.

 

I love programming. I'm not at all comfortable however with the design side of web development. Luckily most of my work has always been behind the scenes. Every time I’ve had freelance work though, I’ve had to outsource the design element.

 

[jcombs_31]

I didn't even own a computer until I started college in the summer of 98.  I knew how to type since middle school but never really used computers at all.  Once I got my first computer I knew this was something I really liked.  I was always a big gamer and really liked computer games.  Long story short it didn't take too long for me to decide to pursue a career utilizing computers in some way.  I started in technical support and chose to major in Computer Information Systems for my Bachelors degree.  I took my first programming course that started with C++, even though we really just did some procedural C.  I then moved quickly into OOP with Java and a couple courses in Relational Databases in Oracle.  I realized I did like programming but due to some mistakes in my youth I wasn't a math expert by any means.    All the programming I did in C and Java was pretty much just console programs. 

 

What really sparked my interest was my course in web programming.The professor wasn't very good but having some real assignments got me started in creating my first website.  I knew that I could now apply some programming and create usable designs backed by a database.  The first thing we learned was html, coldfusion and some basic flash.  The course was actually pretty bad.  I knew of PHP and wanted to try it.  PHPfreaks was I think the first place that I found some good info and I created my first data driven website.

 

I was pretty artistic as a kid but gave up any drawing for MANY years.  I heard of Photoshop and aquired a copy.  I watched a lot of training videos to learn the ins and outs and eventually got pretty decent.

 

Today web development is a small part of my day job and I freelance when work comes my way on the side.

[nrg_alpha]

For me, web development is currently a hobby. It more or less got a bit more serious back in around the circa 2005/2006, when I wanted to have a digital art portfolio website, but didn't really know web development that well (I knew some HMTL from previous sparse tinkering). I had a few options: Use a template / blog system, - or - pay someone to do it for me, - or - go the hard way by learning / doing it myself. The problem with the first two options is that if I needed to make any changes to the site, I wouldn't really know where to start or what to do. The second option also added expenses to the equation as well. So I would never become self reliant going those routes.

 

I started buying books and frequenting websites based on web development and googling articles. Slowly but surely, I started to get the hang of it. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn (so, much like Alex, it became somewhat of an obsession). I did get my site done, but while the road of self education was difficult (and far from being complete), I am so glad I ultimately chose to learn web development instead. If I need to make changes to my site, I know what will need to be done.

 

What brought PHP specifically into the equation was when I noticed some websites had "Today's date" in their pages. I was curious as to how the site "knows" the date. As you can imagine, I was perplexed when I viewed those pages source (didn't tell me much due to PHP being parsed server-side before hand). I started Googling around, and found out about this free language called PHP that could apply dynamic content to sites. So now I understand how to put in today's date (and a little more).

 

 

So to this day, it remains a hobby that I'm fiercely interested in. But I won't deny the possibility in perhaps doing it for a living somewhere down the road. I'll see where it takes me.

[premiso]

I started when I was 8 on our first computer which ran DOS / Win 3.1 with Prodigy Internet. I would watch my dad and memorize all of his passwords then get into the computer and login to the internet. Little did I know that the internet cost money by the minute and yea, I got in deep shit for racking up the bill and for being on it at 8.

 

I did not get into web design until I was 12/13 while playing Rainbow 6 I saw a website someone made for the clan I was in and asked him how it was made, I actually was asking how he made this 3d image, and he just said "Notepad". So I looked all over how to do images in notepad and somehow stumbled onto HTML. Well I memorized most if not all HTML within 2 weeks and my hunger was not settled, so I went and learned Javascript and did all my testing on Geocities/Homestead with shitty websites (think of the Simpsons when homer makes his website prior to the Mr X). After that I was easily amused with Javascript for a few years and learned a bit of Java, not much though.

 

After that I tried VB/ASP but I was kind of put off by the Visual studio costing money so I looked for a free solution and found Pearl/CGI. Learned some Pearl until I came across PHP. Well after I found PHP that was what I wanted to code in. I learned it all from online. When I went to college I took a course in Pearl, as they did not offer a PHP course. Learned the basics of programming there, namely how to properly use functions and debugging techniques. Then a bunch of classes later (all the same basic thing as Pearl) I took an Oracle class and learned SQL and how to do databases properly.  After graduating college with an associates degree at 19, I took on a job for a local programming company.

 

Well the company was not in the ideal location, but I learned a ton from the few months I worked for them and finally got a job closer to my wife (gf at the time) doing IT Support. Although I love to program, IT support is more my area as I have a nack for helping people / talking people through computer problems without getting too frustrated and I do like the hardware side of computers too, so taking them apart is always fun.

 

Now PHP is really just a hobby, however I used to be pretty decent in .Net studio, J# C# C++ VB and ASP, I have not used them in a long time. I do use Java now and again, but PHP is just too nice for me and I like to stick to it.

 

Fun stuff and it all started by memorizing my parents passwords as they typed.

[PugJr]

I'm not gonna make another "TL:DR" as nearly every post here is one, so I'll keep it snappy.

 

I liked text based games. I wanted to make one. PHP.

[roopurt18]

I was born in 1980 and, according to my parents, beating their friends' asses in Pac Man on the atari when I was two.  Apparently I've been a gamer for most of my life as I still play them today.

 

While growing up my dad worked for So. California Edison and later as a self-employed general contractor.  I commuted with him to Edison many times.  When he was a contractor I also helped him on many jobs.  Most of it is hard work and I was always thinking to myself, "Fuck this.  I'm going to be a lawyer."

 

Early in high school I realized two things:

1) Lawyers have to take a lot of school

2) I hate school

 

So then I started thinking about career choices.  Everyone was always telling me to do what you love and I love video games so I started thinking I could create them.  Now next door to me lived a computer programmer.  The guy before him in the same house was a computer programmer as well.  And the guy after him, again in the same house, was also a computer programmer.  They never seemed like they were working very hard at all; in fact they were always hanging out in front drinking a beer. 

 

I asked one of them, "If I wanted to program games what would I need to do?"

 

"Learn C++."

 

So I bought my very first programming book around 1994 or 1995.  It was Sams Teach Yourself Visual C++ in 21 Days and it came with MS Visual C++ 2.0!

 

Man I was hooked.  I made it most of the book without much trouble, until I got to pointers and references.  Then it got a little tough.  Then I got my license and started having a social life.  I stopped programming for a while.

 

During my senior year in high school I enrolled in a Visual Basic course at the local junior college.  This was when I noticed that programming seems to be a natural ability for me.  While many people, mostly adults, were struggling with the concepts, I thought it was a breeze.

 

So I decided that my major would be Computer Science with a minor in Physics; this was so I could make 3D game engines.

 

Fast forward several years and I was finally finishing up school and job hunting.  I first applied at several game companies.  One was kind enough to send me back a test.  I never got an interview though.

 

Simultaneously I was leading a World of Warcraft guild and had made the guild website from scratch in PHP and MySQL as a side project.

 

The game thing wasn't working out and my fiancee found a job posting for a PHP / MySQL developer.  I ended up working there for two years maintaining and enhancing a web application.

 

I now work at another small company writing all sorts of custom applications and software in PHP and either PostgreSql or MS Sql.

 

I'm really glad that I don't work for a game company.  Most of the game programmers are over-worked and underpaid and their compensation is, "But you work for a game company!!!"

 

I work 9 to 5, almost never stay late, get my vacations, and probably earn more than the average game developer.

 

(edit)  Small addition.  While in college I still thought I was going to be a game programmer so I took all sorts of hard core classes in 3D programming, artificial intelligence, and computer architecture.  I never once took or thought about taking any classes in databases or web based technologies.  Funny how things turn out.

[Alex]

It seems like these life decisions come easier to others. I've been struggling for years trying to determine a career path. Being extremely indecisive in general doesn't help when it comes to such big decisions. A large majority of my peers didn't have a hard time deciding what they want to do, but for me it's just not that easy.

 

I do love programming, and I don't see myself getting out of it anytime soon, but there are just so many things to consider. Salary, what education is required, and actually being able to find a job after college.. which might not be so easy from my research, IT jobs are declining.

 

I've considered a lot of other things, for a little while I was strongly considering going into theoretical physics, or perhaps astrophysics. The problem with this is the salary isn't that great, and the best opportunities (at least money wise) seem to be as college professors later on in years, which I'm not too interested. Although, money isn't everything, and it is really amazing to have the opportunity to be working on the forefront of human knowledge. I still don't think this is right for me. Seeing a lot of you who have the same passion for programming that I have and actually deciding to go after jobs in these fields is making me think.

 

To those of you who have decided to go after a career in what they love.. programming.. was it hard for you to make your decision, or am I just being overly stubborn?

[mikesta707]

I had written a huge reply, and I accidently closed the damn page...

 

well long story short, web design is kind of a job (as i do some freelance work when I can) but its mostly a hobby, as I'm getting more into desktop application programming

[roopurt18]

For me it was extremely easy.

 

1) I like it.

2) I'm good at it.

3) People will pay me for it.

 

The "do what you love" is extremely important.  I love programming.  I wrote programs even as a hobby before my career.  However, as much as I love it, there are days I go into work and think "I don't want to do this today."

 

I can't imagine what I'd think if I didn't even like what I did.

[trq]

I worked in warehousing and distribution for over ten years before moving to development full time. For a while there I wasn't actually sure I wanted to go because I didn't want to ruin my beloved hobby. No regrets at all now though, wish I'd done it earlier.

 

I love getting to work in the mornings and usually find myself working back. Even when I get home I usually have more work waiting for me.

[Daniel0]

To those of you who have decided to go after a career in what they love.. programming.. was it hard for you to make your decision, or am I just being overly stubborn?

 

Just do what you want to do. Whether that's computer science, self-taught programmer, joining the army, dancing, theoretical physics. A high salary isn't everything. What good is earning good money if you hate going to work every morning?

 

Whatever you choose is probably not a "wrong" choice. Let's say you start studying physics. That doesn't mean you have to become a physicist and you can never change career. Let's say you start studying CS and your fear about lack of IT jobs turns out to be true. The problem solving skills and the analytical and abstract thinking you'll have learned is useful in many other areas.

[JonnoTheDev]

I got an appenticeship with a web design company back in 97 when I left school.

Went on to do software engineering in college / uni whilst working.

Moved into IT networks, server management probably around 2000 setting up Novell, NT, Win2K, Unix servers, users, etc and installing Cisco switches, fibre links, VPN's, firewalls, etc.

Moved back into web development about 5-6 years ago and started learning php / mysql etc with the company I still work for.

 

Really, sometimes I wish I had an outdoor job like on a construction site or as a gardener as I have been working with computers for so long my eyes sometimes feel like they are bleeding. I hate computers, wierd really.

[jcombs_31]

I got an appenticeship with a web design company back in 97 when I left school.

Went on to do software engineering in college / uni whilst working.

Moved into IT networks, server management probably around 2000 setting up Novell, NT, Win2K, Unix servers, users, etc and installing Cisco switches, fibre links, VPN's, firewalls, etc.

Moved back into web development about 5-6 years ago and started learning php / mysql etc with the company I still work for.

 

Really, sometimes I wish I had an outdoor job like on a construction site or as a gardener as I have been working with computers for so long my eyes sometimes feel like they are bleeding. I hate computers, wierd really.

 

I really enjoy landscaping and also like construction type trades.  Sometimes I wish I would have gone another route, but I still do enjoy computers.  I almost became a firefighter but didn't want to be a medic.

[448191]

I really enjoy sex and drinking beer (simultaneously is just heaven). Never was able to elevate it into an career though. So I decided to just stick with Web Development. Raw deal, when you think about it.

[JonnoTheDev]

I really enjoy sex and drinking beer (simultaneously is just heaven). Never was able to elevate it into an career though. So I decided to just stick with Web Development. Raw deal, when you think about it.

Actually, the company i'm at does a lot of porn / adult websites, so not far off combining the two.

[cags]

I really enjoy sex and drinking beer (simultaneously is just heaven). Never was able to elevate it into an career though. So I decided to just stick with Web Development. Raw deal, when you think about it.

Actually, the company i'm at does a lot of porn / adult websites, so not far off combining the two.

If they let you drink beer, I want a job...

[JonnoTheDev]

If they let you drink beer, I want a job...

We do have beer in the fridge on a friday sometimes. I'll let you know if any positions come up!

[jcombs_31]

I really enjoy sex and drinking beer (simultaneously is just heaven). Never was able to elevate it into an career though. So I decided to just stick with Web Development. Raw deal, when you think about it.

 

Life's a bitch aint it!

[Andy-H]

I'm not gonna make another "TL:DR" as nearly every post here is one, so I'll keep it snappy.

 

I liked text based games. I wanted to make one. PHP.

 

Ditto =p

[448191]

But yeah.. Living behind my pc gets a little old sometimes. And you have to make some sacrifices, eventually. For example my GF recently started complaining that her back hurts in that awkward position under my workstation desk. Dunno if I should get a higher desk or a smaller GF.. Either way it is going to cost me. But like I said, sacrifices will have to made for this type of lifestyle. I made a haiku. I call it "Web Developer blues":

 

girlfriend fed up

money spent on beer

new girlfriend mouse-controllable