Web Dev thread 2013
Hello fellow (amateur or otherwise) developers.
At the moment I'm working on a WordPress based site as a subcontracting job. It's going really well and both the guy I got the job from and the client are happy with it so far. I've found making good use of plugins to be a massive time saver. I recently discovered underscores, a really basic, skeleton framework for starting a new WordPress theme. If you are serious about making themes it is a must. Web dev and design has mainly been a hobby for me (aside for some basic updating work in '07-'08) but I love it and want to take it a lot further. I know most of the curriculum already, but there is a diploma at SBIT that I'm keen on doing, just to help me get a job one day. I would link to my stuff but I don't want this thread to start off looking like advertising and to get nuked. discuss |
04:34pm 15/05/13 Permalink
I dunno man, I wouldn't recommend studying this or working in it. I'm a web developer, and I would be open to getting hit with a truck instead.
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04:59pm 15/05/13 Permalink
Why though? Is that because of the work itself or the people you are dealing with?
It's not something I want to do forever, I'm thinking somewhere between five and ten years full time with occasional pet projects of my own in to the future. |
05:09pm 15/05/13 Permalink
Yeah it's a bit of both. I've worked at places where the work was good but the people were terrible, and vice versa. I think web developers are undervalued workers as pretty much everyone thinks they can build a webpage. More often than not my job is to take somebody's s***** design, or worse: somebody's terribad PHP/HTML/CSS, make it work and maintain it - I have a lot of experience so it can be quite a hit to morale to have to knowingly spend time on something you know is amateurish and will be perceived by users/customers as being very unprofessional. I think at our age it's not at all what we'd be happy with. I only work as a web developer because it's quite an easy job to get and I'm lazy when it comes to job hunting, luckily my working environment is OK right now but lately I have been considering looking elsewhere. I also find that most people I work with have very little training or education compared to me, so I doubt it is worth spending money on.
I do have to say that web development has gotten much easier since IE6 started to die off, there is much less of a learning curve now. Like I said.... I dunno man. You do have a passion for it which is useful to embrace. I've been making websites since I was 13 so it's not really a matter of ambition or passion for me, just that I happen to be good at it and can't be f***ed getting a serious job. Play 'The Sims', web developer is listed under 'slacker jobs'. |
05:27pm 15/05/13 Permalink
It does sound a lot like your work environment and the jobs you have had have been crappy.
But don't you aspire to starting your own business and creating some killer app? Especially given that you have been doing it since you were so young. |
05:31pm 15/05/13 Permalink
But don't you aspire to starting your own business and creating some killer app? Yes I do, but I have more desire to pursue non-web projects. I guess that could change. |
05:45pm 15/05/13 Permalink
I just kicked off my own business doing digital consulting, going pretty good so far - when i look at coders I feel sorry for them, because unless you are top tier the global market is very competitive, especially if you look at places like India/Bangladesh etc.
I actually need someone to help me with a web project so show me some of your work |
06:01pm 15/05/13 Permalink
WordPress is cool.
We're building our SaaS app on RubyonRails, PostGreSQL and a client-side JavaScript framework, ember.js. For things like pre-build frameworks Twitter's BootStrap is pretty awesome: http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/ |
07:15pm 15/05/13 Permalink
I was aiming to get a web development job in Melbourne but after missing out on a lot of interviews I've moved and now work IT for a Council. I still do web development and hopefully one day I'll be able to break into the field as I really enjoy it.
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08:41pm 15/05/13 Permalink
Haven't used underscores before so might check it out although I tend to avoid Wordpress where possible these days as I'm dealing bigger and more custom sites and extending Wordpress' posts can only take you so far.
I do really like Wordpress and believe it to be very powerful - but have recently started to notice its limitations. That said I'm not doing nothing to fix it so I have no right to complain. I've been doing professional development for around 5 years and I still love it, but when it kick you in the ass it kicks hard. I do more front end development which is currently really exciting so may be a bit of a different ball game. I cannot agree with this you enough on this Thermite: I think web developers are undervalued workers as pretty much everyone thinks they can build a webpage. |
09:21am 16/05/13 Permalink
I think web developers are undervalued workers as pretty much everyone thinks they can build a webpage. Good web developers (building brochure-ware or simple cart sites with off the shelf / oss products) are undervalued, sure ... but the market is saturated with people doing this work and hobbyists etc doing good work in wordpress etc. Its not an unfair assertion really, you can get the kid in the office who spends too much time f*****g about on the web to do a decent site. That said software developers (who can build scalable and reliable enterprise-grade software) are very much a valued commodity. If you're really a quality software dev and you're selling yourself short as a web monkey then you can fix the problem :) |
09:26am 16/05/13 Permalink
Haha Ticcles will be along to vomit shortly.Every Rails developer I've ever met swears up and down that Rails is awesome and all the talk about it not being scalable is bulls***. But almost everyone I've met who's been involved in a decent sized Rails project seems to say that it was a terrible mess and they either migrated off it or are looking to at the first opportunity. I don't know what to believe any more! |
09:45am 16/05/13 Permalink
Yeh, the one that Ticcles and I are rebuilding is a complete clusterf*** and has been a huge money pit for the business principal. The best that can be said about it is that it still kind of works and they are still in business.
I've played with Rails and quite like it, its a really expressive language and has some nice language-level features. It's not as scalable as a C-based language but its fine. Any problems can be solved with good algorithms and possibly throwing a little more hardware at the problem. I'd be a hypocrite if I said this was a problem (.Net framework, lols). Anyway the devs (at least for the organisation in question) were flighty, didn't think of the future and bailed when things got at all difficult or boring (omg, refactoring!) ... not just once, either. A few times. Seems to be a problem of the types of devs it attracts rather than an issue with the language. Which is completely unsurprising. |
10:08am 16/05/13 Permalink
scalable and reliable enterprise-grade software That's a bit of a tall order. I am plenty competent to work on anything, but having that kind of experience under your belt is hard to get! Knowing about government operations, accounting, business systems - no idea how to get into that. I have designed and spec'd out a web CRM before, and I've worked extensively with web CMS systems, even thought about developing my own out of frustration with the others, but there are plenty out there and they're not that hot of an item - I've noticed a downward Google Trend on various popular CMS software, and have heard convincing arguments for not using them., so I have no motivation to write my own anymore. The job where I work now, I was essentially hired (along with another guy) to develop a new multilingual CMS in PHP5. The company took a turn for the worse and my work is purely churning out sites to make money. |
11:33am 16/05/13 Permalink
Its not really about understanding regulations etc. Its the client's job to provide that information (and your job to extract if if you're doing the analysis). Its your job to create a software framework to suit the environment that works, is maintainable and solid.
The company took a turn for the worse and my work is purely churning out sites to make money. Cranking out wordpress sites (?) seems like a dead end to me. You're not authoring code to a significant degree and gaining experience in the big end of town which is where experience and talent is valued. |
04:39pm 16/05/13 Permalink
Interesting, Basecamp and Basecamp New are still on Ruby and they're massive, but obvs DHH started RubyonRails.
Might be a developer issue, any language sucks balls if it's done badly. Ruby seems to be particularly well-suited to building light-weight web-apps. Edit: More recent list, 2011, some big names on here, ScribD, Hulu, GitHub: http://www.developerdrive.com/2011/09/20-best-sites-built-with-ruby-on-rails/ Another list: http://www.setfiremedia.com/blog/50-of-the-best-websites-developed-using-ruby-on-rails I heard the Twitter to scala move was more about large numbers of developers then load scaling. @dais We used Drupal extensively at our digital agency, I wouldn't recommend it, it seemed bloated and never really worked very well for more complex brochure/database sites.. which is kind of what its billed for as WP can be too simple. Despite what the Drupal fanboys say, and I've noticed it seems to be losing popularity. Better to use a good framework like Cake or Zend if doing a complex brochureware. Concrete5 looks pretty interesting as up and coming WP alternative. Check this link out for a useful comparison: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/10/top-10-content-management-systems/ Quick Google for a more recent article: http://www.websigmas.com/content/top-5-content-management-systems-for-2013/ |
04:52pm 16/05/13 Permalink
Its not really about understanding regulations etc. Its the client's job to provide that information (and your job to extract if if you're doing the analysis). Its your job to create a software framework to suit the environment that works, is maintainable and solid. Well yes, but I thought you were talking about having that kind of experience already when you're in the job market. Cranking out wordpress sites (?) seems like a dead end to me. You're not authoring code to a significant degree and gaining experience in the big end of town which is where experience and talent is valued. We don't use wordpress, I wish I was that lucky. Nope our framework was written by some kid in 2002 who subsequently announced that he was the devil and nobody ever saw him again. Its huge and integrates with our core service, so it's not going to be replaced with some off-the-shelf or 3rd party solution. I continually tack more features onto it too, I upgraded it to php5, but it isn't a quality designed system. Dais, I worked with Joomla and Drupal professionally for 3 years, and then continued with Drupal for another 3 years in my spare time developing modules for other developers. I wouldn't recommend getting into Joomla at all, though it might be better now. Drupal was also getting better, but also more convoluted. I kind of got the s**** with Drupal a few months ago and have flat out quit contributing - the politics of an open source community and having to deal with unreasonable people from all over the world, mostly support-leeches, really wore me down. I also got really sick of seeing someone join the community for 2 months, make one website, and then write/publish a text book about Drupal - what is that all about! I don't think Drupal is the future, but if I had to make some brochure or ecommerce website for somebody and hand over the keys to them - Drupal is perfect (because I know how it works). You know it probably didn't help that I wasn't being paid to work with Drupal anymore, but most people who do are employed by some kind of Drupal shop, and I'd constantly get Indians tracking down my private contact info and saying that my modules and stuff didn't meet their client's needs and then tellng me what their deadline was for me to change it. |
05:14pm 16/05/13 Permalink
Moving on from WordPress, what do you guys think of drupal and joomla by comparison? Can you recommend any other CMS? I used to use Joomla before Wordpress and much prefer Wordpress. Although that was Joomla 1.5 so I have no idea how it is anymore. I've only ever used Drupal once and am not exactly keen to try it again. More recently I've worked on a couple of projects with Silverstripe and while I've only really done the front end of it - it did look quite promising. |
10:51pm 16/05/13 Permalink
RoR is actually a great language. I have had 0 prior experience with it but was able to easily pick it up and work my way through it. However I find, at least in Melbourne, that the "type" of developer it attracts is more often than not the reason why I and others before me have struggled with RoR applications.
Without wanting to start some sort of tech war, I generally find developers in the MS stack have more formal qualifications (masters in CompSci, etc), have done their time with large scale backend systems driving high volume/high transactional business (banks, insurers, other boring s***, etc). My experience over the last ~3 months with RoR developers is they cut their code by being hobbyists and jump into professional development roles based on that experience. It works fantastically well for some companies (Envato, 37 Signals, etc) but like everything, doesn't necessarily fit well with other companies. With my current company we need functionality and features that the MS stack provides and most importantly it needs the resources available to take on the work. A poor example to show the difference in developers but I've interviewed half a dozen C# developers over the last fortnight and all came in dressed for business (suits, ties, articulate, able to demonstrate application of software architecture theories, etc). The RoR developers I interviewed a few months back were jeans, sneakers, talked about how "awesome" and "cool" technology was to play with. At the moment, I (and company) need the former type of people. |
01:14pm 17/05/13 Permalink
It's where the two breeds cross over is where it gets even more interesting Tic, rigid adherence to GoF patterns over solving real business problems. Architecture astronauts I believe is the term.
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01:36pm 17/05/13 Permalink
Web Developer in my mind is unfortunately becoming a dime-a-dozen given the rise of Rapid site building framework such on W/LAMP stack. They can churn out sites quite fast but that is the problem you are getting into the market that fighting its way to the bottom, it's very hard to compete with people from say Bangladesh, Pakistan, India etc in terms of cost alone. Those guys can do alright work for very cheap since a lot of them studied over seas and a lot of them are very highly qualify academically.
What you want to be eventually is a knowledge rich / client focused consultant. These are the type of people that can bridge the "gap" between the stake holders i.e. CEO/CIO and other business-y type people and the hard tech talk of the actual software development methodologies and disciplines. That's where the need is and consequently where the money is. The work is more interesting than just cutting the code all day, at least for me at this stage of my career. I tend to agree with the type of developers, Windows / MS / Java are generally Comp Sci or train in the "traditional" way. I guess it's only natural since they're the type of technologies used in traditional enterprise businesses. That's not to say you shouldn't "cut your teeth" on RoR or LAMP platform but I'd choose the path very carefully otherwise it'd be hard to get out of the job role. You can always look at the other .NET rapid site / Content Management Framework like Umbraco, DotNuke etc as these will allow you "churn" website out but also get you foot into the .NET world which I think will open more doors into the more "enterprisey" type work eventually since you'd then understand the .NET paradigm you just need to adapt to non-web related if you need to without too much re-learning. Edit: I see you're looking at doing "web dev" course, I would say IMHO if you are serious about being a software developer you will be far better off doing a proper computer science degree. I know it's uncool to say it but University degree and what it teaches still work, fundamentals may be "boring" but it's what most people need to write software properly be it websites of multi million dollar payroll software. But it takes longer and you really would have to want to be a into software (note I didn't say web development) for a career. Anyway that's my $0.00000002 :) Good luck with it. |
04:27pm 17/05/13 Permalink
Thanks for all the in-depth replies guys. This thread has opened my eyes a bit and I've realised if I want to really make something of myself I may be better off working for myself, creatively, on freelance site building and my own projects.
I now think that spending $16,000 on that diploma that will tell me a bunch of things I already know, just to get an entry level job, would be a huge waste of time and money. Especially when those resources would be better spent on my own personal work. Really it comes down to wanting to be my own boss and take on the projects that I want to do, instead of wasting my ideas on someone else. |
04:34pm 17/05/13 Permalink
My bro just put me on to this site: http://www.codecademy.com
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04:37pm 17/05/13 Permalink
Get your http://pluralsight.com/ on - one of the best tutorial courses out there.
That's what I do most of the time now - it's awesome. Get paid a lot and it's a whole lot of fun. I enjoy getting into a business, figuring out the problems and implementing technical solutions to fixing it. The type of day where you can sit with the CEO, the customer service manager (sup girl) or the warehouse manager. Find out what is hurting them in their process and implementing changes to software process or creating software to fix it. |
04:51pm 17/05/13 Permalink
My bro just put me on to this site: http://www.codecademy.com Learning to code yourself it fine to certain point but to get beyond that you need proper structured course like a degree or other professional training. I've done the same, started 16 odd years ago and just self taught etc but found that you'd hit the ceiling eventually. Went to do uni degree and learn a lot more. A lot of it I thought was pretty useless because I'd worked up to that point but still good to learn them. |
04:52pm 17/05/13 Permalink
Get your http://pluralsight.com/ on - one of the best tutorial courses out there.That's what I do most of the time now - it's awesome. Get paid a lot and it's a whole lot of fun. I enjoy getting into a business, figuring out the problems and implementing technical solutions to fixing it. The type of day where you can sit with the CEO, the customer service manager (sup girl) or the warehouse manager. Find out what is hurting them in their process and implementing changes to software process or creating software to fix it. Yeah me too, cutting code just really a bit too mechanical for me now but I still derived joy out of it. Though I find it more interesting chatting to those people you mentioned. So much so that I'm planing to do an MBA at UQ to understand the mindset of the executive and be on the same frequency as them. Exciting times :) |
04:54pm 17/05/13 Permalink
Thanks for all the in-depth replies guys. This thread has opened my eyes a bit and I've realised if I want to really make something of myself I may be better off working for myself, creatively, on freelance site building and my own projects.If you are interested in developing your own projects you should think about one that you are really keen for, and look at something like iLab's Germinate programme: http://www.ilabaccelerator.com/germinate/ |
04:56pm 17/05/13 Permalink
Indooroopilly eh. Do you have anything to do with that trog?I have been mentoring out there for a while; I think it needs some more good web dev types with ideas to apply for their programme - there's a few great tech people there but there's always room for more developers |
07:33pm 17/05/13 Permalink
Code Academy is good, you should also check out Team Treehouse, cheap, simple and good. http://teamtreehouse.com/
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02:07am 18/05/13 Permalink
I did read the web site, but as someone who is involved how would you explain the program in your own words?Basically, anyone who has an idea - either a technical person with the capability to develop it, or a non-technical person who is a Subject Matter Expert in some field - that they think has commercial value can apply for iLab's Germinate programme. Germinate is a 3 month intensive "course" that helps you take your idea and turn it into a commercial product. You are given office space at iLab's facility out at Indro Longpocket, and are helped to develop a strategy to make your idea into a reality. You are given the opportunity to interface with a wide variety of mentors from many different fields (accounting, legal, software development, etc) and can draw on their knowledge and experience as required. You also get access to up to $20,000 in funding to make it all happen. At the moment this money cannot fund /you/ personally - that is, you can't just go in to the programme and get $20k to do whatever you want with; it is intended to be used along side the work you are personally doing on your project to help you accomplish it faster (e.g., outsourcing some parts of the software, paying for sales/marketing/PR services, etc). Application to the programme is broken up into several stages - currently the first stage is you apply online. If you are shortlisted, you are invited to participate in "Bootcamp", which is a week long event where you pitch your idea daily in front of a panel of judges. You also get access to stacks of great talks during the week (almost everyone who attends Bootcamp comes out of it saying "I cannot believe we just got all that free training and we didn't have to pay for it" - there are a lot of great talks that provide a lot of really useful insight for anyone looking to do their own startup). Each pitch is judged independently (the idea is that your pitch should improve throughout the week); at the end of the week a separate panel looks at all the scores, analyses all the comments, and then of the ~30-40 participants, maybe 5-10 will be offered a place in the programme. I've used the word "currently" a lot because the iLab guys are constantly looking at ways of refining and improving the programme. Only two "classes" of Germinate guys have gone through so the results are still coming in. Unfortunately I wasn't organised to post about the last application process here, which I really wanted to, but I will definitely be promoting the next one more heavily here; I think it will be a good one and I'm hoping that we'll see a bit more of an influx of technical people / software developers. If you are in Brisbane and interested in startups I'd strongly encourage you to check out the following: - iLab: http://www.ilabaccelerator.com/ - as above - River City Labs - http://www.rivercitylabs.net - a coworking space in Fortitude Valley. You basically pay a monthly fee and get access to a desk, Internet, boardroom, etc in their facility. Great guys doing great stuff there. They also run a LOT of really really good events - nearly every week there is some free event you can go to and listen to people doing cool stuff. Definitely subscribe to their event calendar: http://www.rivercitylabs.net/events - Right Pedal Studios - http://rightpedalstudios.com/ - a gaming accelerator based at River City Labs. If you have a development team and a good gaming concept you can apply and they will help fund development in return for a stake in the game. I'll be posting more about this (hopefully) soon. Currently only for mobile games. - QUT's Creative Enterprise Australia: http://creativeenterprise.com.au/ - an incubator focusing on the creative industries. If you're at the Gold Coast: - Silicon Lakes: http://siliconlakes.com.au/ - this is relatively new; I know some of the guys that set it up but haven't had a chance to catch up with them so not sure where they are at. If you're in Sydney: - Fishburners: http://fishburners.org/ - I haven't been there but have met a bunch of the guys who manage it and the dude who set it up. They are kicking all sorts of ass and it sounds like a really great place to be. If you're in Melbourne: - York Butter Factory: http://yorkbutterfactory.com/ - this place is rad, been there a couple times (and prolly going again on Monday actually). Another co-working space, it is run by a couple of VC dudes. There are several other options outside of Brisbane but these are the main ones I know of. If people are interested in more information about any of these please don't hesitate to get in touch. There is a lot of startup activity in Brisbane at the moment and more people are needed, especially smart technical people! |
12:19pm 18/05/13 Permalink
One of the teams from iLab just won the pitching competition at Cebit in Sydney last week - local boys representing:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/it-business/startups-woo-investors-at-cebit-australia-inaugural-pitchfest/story-e6frganx-1226654093610 |
10:51am 03/06/13 Permalink
i have a great idea for an application but need some sort of backing to kick it off - too bad i'm not in bris
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06:24pm 04/06/13 Permalink
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08:07pm 04/06/13 Permalink
yeah still in AMS - there is some meetups but its mostly local dutch start up stuff - I really need a proper VC
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08:43pm 04/06/13 Permalink
heading to this http://swams13.eventbrite.com/#
so f***** pumped hopefully this will help launch my shizzle |
06:30pm 17/06/13 Permalink
I'm having some trouble making a change to a WordPress site I made recently.
http://www.undergroundsound.com.au You can see that for each post it says "Posted in 'child category'". I need it to say something like "Posted in 'parent category' - 'child category'". Does anyone know how I can accomplish that? I've searched and searched and posted on stack overflow, but no luck. I'm not a PHP guru yet so it's a bit beyond me. |
09:31pm 22/06/13 Permalink
no offense to anyone personally.. Qglers have done good work on the whole whenever and where ever I have met and seen it.
work hires outside of Australia for coding muscle, and we're working hard to extend that here in Australia. again guys... I am sorry. |
09:51pm 22/06/13 Permalink
Interesting article about the pros and cons of mobile first design: http://designshack.net/articles/css/mobilefirst/
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