Why a Web Developer Job is a Future Proof Career
Looking for a future proof career? Then web development has a bright future, provided you can code and design of course.
Now that businesses are accelerating their online strategies after high street giants like HMV and Blockbusters lost out to online competitors, there’s never been a better time to be a front end web developer.
In fact, the number of front end developer jobs has soared dramatically ever since these, and a few other retailers, went into administration. Meanwhile Python, Perl and Java are becoming increasingly popular skill requirements within the web developer jobs share of the IT jobs market.
How do you become a web developer?
For starters, you need to learn to code. Definitely a solid understanding of HTML and CSS is a must! PHP for server side scripting (which is easier for beginners to pick up than Perl), JavaScript for client side scripting and MySQL for databases.
You’ll find that once you have a good understanding of one of the scripting languages like PHP and JavaScript, it will make learning the other a lot easier. It’s all about getting used to the different naming conventions.
You can also create some database apps in FileMaker and various apps in Visual Basic which is a good way to test out your code as part of the learning process.
Suffice to say that learning web development is more difficult than you may expect. And that’s before you learn Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Dreamweaver. Of course, having some creative flair, imagination and being able to actually design stuff that looks good is a big requirement.
And all of this is before you teach yourself all of the above and pay to take an exam to get a certificate for each one. Then you need real work experience (possibly from a personal project) before you can even start as a junior.
With all this to do, who needs to waste 3 years in higher education?
Web Developer Jobs VS Web Designer Jobs
There’s a lot of cross over between web designers and web developers. Both design, both use Adobe products and both can code. But while web design is more creative on the front end of a website, web development is more about the functionality for customer forms and even algorithms for affiliate price match websites.
However, technical web designer jobs are often called “front end web developer jobs”, so there’s quite a bit of confusion when it comes to exact definitions.
All the same, while the number of front end web developer jobs seems to be rising, the number of web designer jobs is falling.
Summary
There’s clearly a benefit to being able to code. Not only does it give you a more versatile skill set, but the average salary of a web designer is £30,000 while the average front end web developer salary is £35,000.
So while there are more requirements, the money is better and the number of web developer jobs is rising, while the number of web designer jobs it shrinking. And with the continued migration of business to the Web, web developer careers are looking like a good option for the foreseeable future.
