3 ms·

Ask HN:Need advice regarding career

2 points by desigooner 16y ago

Dear HN, I am currently working as a Web/ FileMaker Developer for a university. Lately though, it's just been managing projects and more of FileMaker work vs. web development. With a few personal issues and this scenario, I haven't really been able to devote time to development and learning and lost touch so as to speak. Ultimately, I'd really want to start something of my own but I feel I am at loss to hack it because I am not as strong at development as I used to be a few years ago. I feel I've missed out on a lot of newer technologies that are becoming a standard today. With rapidly changing scenario in terms of the web technologies (viz. Ruby, Python, PHP5, NoSQL, Cloud computing, et al.), what would be the best path to reboot myself and bring myself up to speed with the going-ons today. Also, what would be the direction to go in as far as working on something new in education or web in general goes?! Pardon me if the my question isn't too coherent.

adrianscott 16y ago
Build a project and put it online. That's the best path, imho. Good luck, go for it, and make it a priority. Just get something working up and online, no matter how simple or embarassing. ;)
samratjp 16y ago
Definitely build a project by learning a few of those technologies. It's ok to start out learning with a framework (Ruby on Rails is pretty acceptable as a framework and easy enough to start with; same could be said with Django). I recommend this http://www.railstutorial.org/ http://www.railstutorial.org/ It's meant to be newbie friendly and it will teach you a lot of those things you mentioned above (Ruby, SQLite, Version control with git + github, Test Driven Development via RSpec, and cloud hosting via Heroku) while building a twitter clone. After that you should build your own projects and you will run into new questions and problems that will dictate your learning. Also don't worry about not knowing Ruby, the book will teach you. If you are too unmotivated but have 15 minutes to spend, try this completely: http://tryruby.org/ http://tryruby.org/ And don't fret too much about changing web technologies. Sometimes, you just have to keep your calm and focus on what matters - essential hacking skills and fundamentals.
- desigooner 16y ago
  THanks for the pointers. I'll look into RailsTutorials.
gexla 16y ago
Niche work might be better than being a more general web developer. There is less competition and you can generally charge better rates for the niche stuff. So you might start out looking at what work is out there for the FileMaker side (I know nothing about that.) Also, managing projects isn't a bad way to go. Making sales is probably the most important part of web development. If you can make the sales then you could start building a web development team (probably a remote team) and have them do the work while you manage the projects. This is risky because devs can flake out on your or you could lose money by underestimating jobs but if you get it right then it could be a better money maker than working solo. If none of the above will work for you now, then you might be best off starting out building sites in something like Wordpress, Drupal, ExpressionEngine, etc. The reason is that there is a huge market for working existing designs (I'm assuming you are a developer as opposed to a designer)into a CMS so the client can easily update the site. A CMS like Wordpress is pretty easy to get started with, doesn't require a lot of technical skill and often you won't need to do anything crazy with PHP (ExpressionEngine requires little to no PHP knowledge.) This will get you started. If you feel that you want to go more the route of custom applications rather than working with content management systems then you could start branching out as you get more comfortable with your dev skills. At this point, go ahead and start researching different scripting languages and the tools / libraries available for each to decide which is the best fit for you. Again, keep your market in mind for it. PHP is a great money maker because of the market size, but you also have a lot more low cost competition. The more niche you go, the lower the competition and the better the rates, but you might also have a harder time finding work. There have been a lot of other posts on hacker news for how to get started. If you already have a great source of work then you are already ahead of the game. If not, then you need to start making a name for yourself. You could hit the pavement and look for local clients but you also need to be able to bring in clients from elsewhere. Use your knowledge to help people where paying clients hang out (Wordpress help forums for example.) Build Wordpress add-ons and give them away (but selling add-ons could also be a good money maker.) Setup Twitter for answering questions and finding people who are looking for paid help. Build your freelance site and use that site for support for your add-ons and posting tutorial I mentioned Wordpress as an example, but you could substitute that with any CMS. Potential goldmines are new up and coming systems which have exploding numbers of new users but have a relatively low developer base. If developers are relatively hard to find, but the demand is high, then you have as much work as you like. I can't think of any examples off-hand, so you would have to do a bit of searching. Also, paid systems are great because the clients interested in those systems are already willing to dish out some cash and lower paid competition generally sticks with free systems. As for advancing technology, it doesn't change as fast as you might think. The bleeding edge moves fast and you have to keep training yourself, but the edge must still keep the caboose in sight. Bonus: Learn Javascript as well as one of the more popular frameworks such as Jquery. It doesn't matter which server side scripting language you learn, you will be using JS.

2 points by desigooner 16y ago

adrianscott 16y ago

Build a project and put it online. That's the best path, imho. Good luck, go for it, and make it a priority. Just get something working up and online, no matter how simple or embarassing. ;)

samratjp 16y ago

Definitely build a project by learning a few of those technologies. It's ok to start out learning with a framework (Ruby on Rails is pretty acceptable as a framework and easy enough to start with; same could be said with Django). I recommend this http://www.railstutorial.org/ http://www.railstutorial.org/ It's meant to be newbie friendly and it will teach you a lot of those things you mentioned above (Ruby, SQLite, Version control with git + github, Test Driven Development via RSpec, and cloud hosting via Heroku) while building a twitter clone. After that you should build your own projects and you will run into new questions and problems that will dictate your learning. Also don't worry about not knowing Ruby, the book will teach you. If you are too unmotivated but have 15 minutes to spend, try this completely: http://tryruby.org/ http://tryruby.org/ And don't fret too much about changing web technologies. Sometimes, you just have to keep your calm and focus on what matters - essential hacking skills and fundamentals.

desigooner 16y ago
THanks for the pointers. I'll look into RailsTutorials.

gexla 16y ago

Niche work might be better than being a more general web developer. There is less competition and you can generally charge better rates for the niche stuff. So you might start out looking at what work is out there for the FileMaker side (I know nothing about that.) Also, managing projects isn't a bad way to go. Making sales is probably the most important part of web development. If you can make the sales then you could start building a web development team (probably a remote team) and have them do the work while you manage the projects. This is risky because devs can flake out on your or you could lose money by underestimating jobs but if you get it right then it could be a better money maker than working solo. If none of the above will work for you now, then you might be best off starting out building sites in something like Wordpress, Drupal, ExpressionEngine, etc. The reason is that there is a huge market for working existing designs (I'm assuming you are a developer as opposed to a designer)into a CMS so the client can easily update the site. A CMS like Wordpress is pretty easy to get started with, doesn't require a lot of technical skill and often you won't need to do anything crazy with PHP (ExpressionEngine requires little to no PHP knowledge.) This will get you started. If you feel that you want to go more the route of custom applications rather than working with content management systems then you could start branching out as you get more comfortable with your dev skills. At this point, go ahead and start researching different scripting languages and the tools / libraries available for each to decide which is the best fit for you. Again, keep your market in mind for it. PHP is a great money maker because of the market size, but you also have a lot more low cost competition. The more niche you go, the lower the competition and the better the rates, but you might also have a harder time finding work. There have been a lot of other posts on hacker news for how to get started. If you already have a great source of work then you are already ahead of the game. If not, then you need to start making a name for yourself. You could hit the pavement and look for local clients but you also need to be able to bring in clients from elsewhere. Use your knowledge to help people where paying clients hang out (Wordpress help forums for example.) Build Wordpress add-ons and give them away (but selling add-ons could also be a good money maker.) Setup Twitter for answering questions and finding people who are looking for paid help. Build your freelance site and use that site for support for your add-ons and posting tutorial I mentioned Wordpress as an example, but you could substitute that with any CMS. Potential goldmines are new up and coming systems which have exploding numbers of new users but have a relatively low developer base. If developers are relatively hard to find, but the demand is high, then you have as much work as you like. I can't think of any examples off-hand, so you would have to do a bit of searching. Also, paid systems are great because the clients interested in those systems are already willing to dish out some cash and lower paid competition generally sticks with free systems. As for advancing technology, it doesn't change as fast as you might think. The bleeding edge moves fast and you have to keep training yourself, but the edge must still keep the caboose in sight. Bonus: Learn Javascript as well as one of the more popular frameworks such as Jquery. It doesn't matter which server side scripting language you learn, you will be using JS.