Student guide to becoming a web developer

Gaining the necessary skills and experience to become a web developer doesn’t come over night. It takes months, even years of practice and learning to take on the role. Being a web developer means you need to be very flexible. Despite what you may think, web developers not only code but have to maintain servers, do web design, do SEO, and more.

The best way to start a career is starting early. And where better to get the ball rolling than in college!

Here are few things you need to know to become a web developer!

Learn the basics

This goes without saying that you need to learn how to use a computer. That aside, you need to know how to properly install software that you need, install dependencies your chosen techcnolgy might require, learn the basic coding of HTML, CSS and Javascript, and learn what “A.M.P” stands for.

xampp

“A.M.P” means Apache, MySQL, PHP. This is basically a web server setup that consists of 3 key elements in setting up a web server. However, this can be mixed up. The first letter “A”, represents a web service. Apache is the most common but we also have NginX, and more. Then 2nd letter “M”, represents the database driver you’ll use. This can be MySQL, PostgreSQL, SqlLite, Oracle, and more. The 3rd letter “P”, represents your backend/server scripting language. Commonly this is PHP. But you can also use PERL, ASP.NET, Java, and more. Basically you can do NginX.PostgreSQL.PHP (NPP), Apache.MySQL.ASP (AMA).

 

Choose a specialization

Web developers have their own field of expertise whether you choose JS as your primary language, PHP, .NET, Java, PERL,
or some other language, the bottom line is you need to choose one and stick with it. You need to improve your knowledge in that one particular path. Learning the others can be a bonus but never be a generalist. Aim to be a specialist. Generalist know little things about a lot of things, while specialist know a lot of things about a few things. It’s not going to help you be a web developer if you become a generalist. You need to master one.

 

Start early

Start as early as your 2nd year in college. This is the year when you should choose a specialization. This is the year whether you find out you want to become a web developer or not. If you do, start choosing a programming language to learn and stick with it!

 

Get educated outside of school

A lot of experienced developers; whether they are web developers, mobile app developers, or desktop app developers, are going to tell you that most of the things they learned, they learned outside of school. With the rise of free education over the internet, you don’t have a reason to not know anything. Look for tutorials on the web. There are a lot on youtube! Heck, you can even ask a friend who knows web development to teach you. Bottom line is, schools are going to teach you the basics. Not saying your teachers only know the basics. Teachers teach the basics because not everyone in your class want to learn, or can handle advanced topics.

 

Get a mentor

Although this isn’t a that high up on the list, getting a mentor does help. This gets you up to speed fast. Most of their hobbies and past time rub off on you. Even their coding styles rub off on you. Whether this is a member of your college’s faculty, a friend, or a relative. Getting the right mentor can work wonders!

 

Follow the current trends in technology

Tech moves fast! You need to know what you’re up against once you graduate. You don’t want to be sitting in a room with the HR of a company looking up praying to suddenly know what technologies are being used in web development. To give you some idea, know that there are package management tools being used right now like NPM, and Composer. You also need to know that there are front-end and back-end frameworks like AngularJS, ReactJS, Laravel, and CodeIgniter.

Accept projects

Companies are going to be looking for candidates who can do things rather than just know things on a theoretical level. Experience is the currency in the IT industry as explained in one of our articles: 5 things students need to know about job hunting. The best way to get projects is by talking to your teachers. If your teachers are really into IT research, they’re going to end up making you build the software. Although there is a large chance you’re not going to get paid. But remember, experience is the currency! You can also do some freelance work. We don’t recommend this because, let’s face it. Who wants to hire a student with hardly any knowledge? If you do get hired as a freelance developer, good for you! That’s better than what most people get!

 

That’s it for our article! I know we haven’t covered everything here. But we hope that this article gives you a pretty good idea of what you should do!

 

Do you agree with our list? Let us know by writing us a comment!

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