Hi all , I’m looking at a career change . Currently design roads and bridges but am interested in becoming a web developer . I don’t want to be tied to working for a company anymore really.

There is a two year distance course I can take here in Sweden (which is free) that starts in September . Just wondering two things really , is there anything I can learn beforehand and do you think this could give me the opportunity to work from home , and work when I want on a freelance basis . Or am I mad?

Thanks!

HTML & CSS

Familiarity with the basics might well help.

There’s a lot of different things involved in being a web developer. There’s the font end, stuff, server side stuff and some database stuff will be extremely useful to know.

HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript would all be a good, start, then some jQuery and AngularJS. That’s some of the front end stuff.

Then for the server side you need to decide whether to go down the Microsoft route or the PHP route – these to my mind are the two main server side technologies.

If the Microsoft route appeals, C# is more prevalent than VB.Net so that’s the better one to concentrate on. It usually pays more, too.

SQL Server for the Mcrosoft route, MySQL for the rest.

This is a massive oversimplification of the subject and there are so many other areas to look into – doubtless others will be along to shoot me down.

The good news is that it’s pretty much all free to learn, the bad news is that you will very likely need a few years experience before you can freelance – unless you can persuade friends and contacts to let you sort their web presence out. Even then you would probably need to do a few freebies to get established.

It’s all doable – I used to work in sales of varying kinds before I made the transition to IT. In this country you would find a lot of people who say ‘But you are a civil engineer, what do you know about web development’ but your mileage may vary.

Just my thoughts – other views are available.

Good luck.

Ok great I thought that my be the case . If you know of any good online resources for learning let me know that would be top banana

Codecademy do HTML & CSS plus others.

Thanks Julian, really good insight ta. I think I could go down the route of friends and contacts , well that’s what I’m hoping . Not planning to get rich , just want to live in the mountains and work freelance a few days a week 🙂

BentoBox is worth having a look at for some pointers

The online course you’re doing, is it Sweden only?

Many thanks. No but it is in Swedish

The basics for the front end are HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Then it’s all about JS frameworks, and there’s a new one every month, but knowing JS is really all you need to understand them.

CSS – try to get into SASS/LESS etc. They make life much easier. CSS is messy.

Loads of online courses, maybe try some local lab kind of ones too.

Microsoft do an online academy thing that’s quite good, though much of it is MS specific but there should be some standard web stuff in there.

Then I’d try to get some odd bits of simple work for local companies and small businesses perhaps. Don’t try to take on too much and careful what they’re asking for. Often they don’t know what they actually want and then start chucking in extra requirements that will go over budget and maybe beyond your skills if it needs a lot of back end work, or it needs more expensive hosting.

Back end might be something you want to then get into, or you can get a lot of that off the shelf or maybe you do the front end and a company has the back end sorted.

Look at setting up a freelance business for it. Initially you might not get enough for an income though so don’t chuck in the day job yet, unless you can afford to.

Alternatively you look for actual contracts or permanent jobs, but then you are less likely going to be able to work from home as most want you to occupy a desk.

You might find web sites that offer freelance work you pick online. They look great and might be worth a look for the experience and learning perspective, but don’t expect to make any money out of it. You compete with the Indians etc who will offer to write a site that should cost £1000s in the UK for £10. Also a lot of people post stuff they want but can only pay £10. You get stupid things like “I want a site like eBay please, I’ll pay £10”

Tools – Check out IntelliJ’s tools which are nice. WebStorm for JavaScript web development. Simple free stuff, there’s Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code.

Assuming the Microsoft route…

Tools

Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition download (free)
SQL Server 2014 download (free)

Tutorials

HTML tutorial
CSS tutorial
JavaScript tutorial
SQL tutorial
C# tutorials
ASP.Net MVC C# tutorial

I know that not everyone likes W3Schools but it will give you some of the basics.

I haven’t tried this site but at first glance it might give you some pointers for SQL Server (and quite a few other things):Quackit tutorials

Any time you want a new tutorial just Google {subject} tutorial and you will get loads of options.

Email me (vdub1992[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk) if you want any more info.

Happy coding!

Wonderful stuff all, really appreciated

You might want to ask yourself why you want to do web development ( other than to live the life of Riley, up there in the mountains 🙂 ). It’s not really what it once was, in that you’d learn it (relatively quickly), and that was what you were – a web developer.

Over the years it has become increasingly complicated, to the point where all of the sub-branches of development are really complicated in themselves, and developers tend to fall into very specialised roles. It’s quite rare now to see people doing everything on their own. Front-end development in particular seems to be changing month from month right now. It’s a massively fast moving industry, and difficult for experienced devs to keep up, never mind get started.

That’s not to say it’s impossible, and there are still a lot of freelancers in particular, that at least try to cover all bases (…sometimes quite badly).

So it might be worth thinking about what attracts you to it, and focusing on that in particular.

If you want to cover everything, it would be worth looking into things like WordPress and Joomla. These can take the weight of the back-end code from you and help you concentrate on the design – though it is still very beneficial to be a good coder in order to get the most out of them.

Qualifications are really not something you need to get into the industry, especially at a freelance level. A good portfolio is much more important, and you’ll get that by learning it yourself. Though as mentioned, resources like Code Academy are very helpful.

Start with some HTML and CSS. If you’re starting from scratch they’re relatively easy to learn and will enable you to build the structure of a web page. CSS can take a long time to master and understand properly. I’m not sure I would bother with LESS/SASS just yet. All it does is generate CSS, and if you understand CSS and a little bit of programming, you will understand LESS and SASS. Do it the other way round and you risk getting confused!

Once you have a grasp at that, I’d say try a bit of Javascript, and PHP and MySql. Learn some design principles, pick up some magazines, books, watch some Youtube Tutorials. Spend countless hours trying to fix things that don’t/won’t work…

I know some people will recommend ASP.NET, C, and the like, and they’ll have plenty of good reasons for it. But I find it’s often big corps using these languages, and programmers tend to come from more traditionally educated backgrounds. And PHP is an easier entry with tons more free resources, tools, and ready built software.

The only real important thing though, is to get stuck in and start learning. It’s a long road.

And PHP is an easier entry with tons more free resources, tools, and ready built software.

Genuinely interested in why you think that PHP is an easier entry?

Can’t comment on free PHP tools and resources etc as its not my area but the tools and tutorials you need to build ASP.Net websites are also free.

.Net hosting is rarely free in my experience whereas PHP hosting usually seems to be – I’ll grant you that.

Genuinely interested in why you think that PHP is an easier entry?

I think PHP accounts for something like 80% of the web. WordPress alone takes a large proportion (I think it was something like 10% of the world’s top 10k websites). It’s simply the route that most people take (in particular freelancers starting out), and I think the OP will benefit from that in what he describes he wants to do. Or more in particular, the endless amounts of tutorials, resources, open source programs, etc, etc. It’s almost never ending.

If you wanted to specialise, I’ve no doubt .NET might earn you more money, and maybe even make you a better programmer (which is all stuff to think about). But the vast majority take the PHP route, and approximately 80% of the world of web development is geared around that.

@butcher Fair comment. I originally thought you meant that PHP was an easier language but having reread your post I don’t think you did mean that.

Digital media agencies will very likely be PHP houses, corporates more likely Microsoft stack – agreed.

Having used both PHP and .Net professionally and ended up focussing exclusively on the latter I’m slightly biased!

I think that maybe hyd1 should think about PHP in the light of what he wants to achieve. Certainly free hosting might be easier to find.