I get the impression that web development is the overwhelming path of choice for bootcamps, etc. But it's only one field in dev/IT.
I wonder if we could do better to have more diversity in early career education.
Thoughts?
I get the impression that web development is the overwhelming path of choice for bootcamps, etc. But it's only one field in dev/IT.
I wonder if we could do better to have more diversity in early career education.
Thoughts?
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I think is about: market, ease and "coolness".
As far as I've seen the amount of jobs for webdev/mobile are orders of magnitude bigger than other fields, even desktop programs are now "Apps" written in Electron, nobody cares (for now) about performance, just the amount of LOC/day; the faster way is the web-way.
And that leads to the ease, you can learn enough HTML in an hour and another couple and you are good to go with CSS, is very easy to copy/paste and you can have something very pretty with very little effort, something that would impress in not much time, nobody cares if you optimized a DB query or solved a tough concurrency problem, you need years to make something awesome in C, and that leads to the third point.
Even that awesome thing you did in C will not be appreciated by 99,999999% of the population, you'll probably not make a lot of money either. You can make an embedded system that will save millions, increase production radically but probably nobody will see it, takes a special kind of person to work hard for no recognition nor money, just for the love of it, it also involves a lot more of work and learning, you'll certainly look better in a coffee shop with a MacBook than in a lab with an old Thinkpad, surrounded by oscilloscopes and smelling like soldering. You could solve the traveling salesman problem in log(n) and nobody would give a damn and the one solving it would be likely underpaid and working in a basement for not much, just because s(he) is having too much fun doing it.
And also other branches come from other disciplines, for data analysis you probably are an economist, physicist, astronomer, etc. Robotics you need a lot of electronics and some, mechanics; for other low level stuff you'll probably need the CS degree or a lot of extra dedication; webdev is more straight forward HTML -> CSS -> JS and stay in the front or add PHP/Python/Java/Ruby and go to the back and with the right framework you can skip the basics (I don't recommend it but you could). 6 months of webdev and you can probably start making money; not so fast in other "branches".
But of course depends heavily in each market, probably in China and South Korea they have more focus in other things.
And could be of course also a perception thing, in dev.to clearly the focus is more towards webdev, so more webdev people post here, and because there is more content about it even more people come; maybe is just what we are seeing; in Instructables and Hackaday they may wonder why nobody talks about webdev :)
Completely Agree, it completely depends on the market & large business
Also an unpopular opinion would be because "JavaScript" has taken the tech market by accident but the only thing you could build with it is Web
yes, that's a good point, so much so that it's bleading to the desktop in things like Electron and went to the server as node.js; IT'S SPREADING!
I am putting off learning JS as long as I can, its a terrible lang. I'm learning Ruby/rails and flutter at the moment.
I happen to like your unpopular opinion ๐
I feel like web dev is a nice target for beginners because it gives you a pretty quick feeling of making progress due to the emphasis on building a GUI. Game development might be the only area with a more intense focus on beginning with graphics.
Definitely doesn't mean that the world only needs web developers, though!
This is probably true.
But I wouldn't be shocked if the need for the GUI feedback might just be for an absence of creative ways to teach other subjects. ๐คทโโ๏ธ
In your opinion, what software field most needs new methods of teaching?
I am a student, so I can honestly say my path is not yet fixed and stone(I hope it remains this way). However, I do noticed while working and searching for computer science internship that most of them are geared towards web development. I believe that is due to several reasons:
On the contrary, web dev provides a nice middle ground. It has been around for a long time, so the technologies involving web dev is very diverse. Some are old like php while others are new like React and Node. It is constantly evolving, but there is always something for everyone regardless of your level of experience.
Disclaimer: these are more or less my observations as a computer science student during this time as such, it is subject to change.
Very good points. As a student, how much exposure have you had to the concept of career-pathing in general, is this explicitly discussed much?
I study CS and in 2 years, nothing about career-pathing. Our institute almost asumes that we'll end up doing research, somehow. Usually us as student will talk with different professionals and convince them to come to give a talk or something. Our professors don't talk much about the industry, they probably don't know much because have been in the academic branch for so long.
While I was a student there was almost no mention of career-pathing. The only exposure we got to the real world was through optional internships. Once you got your paper it was honestly up to you on where you went; not that we really knew where we could go. Most of, if not all, of my cohort were employed by the people we did our internships with.
Ye same, when I was in college doing CS, 3 years ago, there was no career-pathing (that i was aware of at least).
It was pure luck my classmate had a parent in a company looking for web dev interns, and were kind enough to think of me.
I got it and it helped soooo much getting a job straight out of college, but of course only in web dev.
I had a few classes that attempts to focus on the career side of the whole computer science program, but they are usually very broad and focused more on things that are applicable to any job market: interviews, writing a good resume, etc..
I fully believe that being able to chart your career path or at least a rudimentary map of which direction you are heading in is VERY important. However, it is an opportunity I have not yet received :(
We had a discussion at work recently where our org wanted to be able to respond to Alpine 0 days well; and I was like... Uhh no web dev or app dev in the company can quickly just bang out some C/C++ code for MUSLC and patch our Alpine base container, you be crazy friend.
So yeah, maybe we do need more fields represented!
There are also fields within software that don't require low level languages. Ops/infra, test automation, DBA, etc.
It seems to me that a lot of folks just kind of stumble into these paths rather than being presented with them.
We have some test automation people! They're selenium wizards.
Now I want my LinkedIn headline to be Selenium Wizard
There is way more to test automation that just selenium (or other web-ui tests.)
Yes, but most recruiters on LinkedIn do not know that
If you're attempting to attract MORE LinkedIn recruiters, you're doing it wrong. So many InMails get wasted on me weekly.
Not more, but ideally not ones for manual testing positions. Or Java/C# devs.
Selenium Wizardis a clever enough phrase that succulently wraps up what kind of gig to contact about.The problem is the learning curve. In webdev it's linear.
I think it's rather mountainous. Something like this:
There's a lot of ups and downs during the learning experience as the tech stack is kinda overwhelming and evolving frequently. It happens that sometimes you make progress in a certain subject but you find yourself in need to re-learn the basic to advance and explore new paths you weren't aware of previously.
Is it though? I feel like you could start in any variety of sub-disciplines of webdev and take the path from there. I don't know if any dev field is definitively linear.
How exactly? I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just curious as to how you arrived at your conjecture that learning web development is linear compared to other fields.
Because when you want to do something basic you just need to reach for basic information/knowledge/documentation which is always somewhere right there.
Yeah, right but the amount of work you have to do is a lot different. The thing is JavaScript is a scripting language. My first approach to programming ever was C++ and I failed. When I was 17 I wanted to write a game bot in AutoHotkey (I guess?) which is also scripting language. It was a game-changer, suddenly everything was easy to do. So yeah, I think if you never coded before then scripting language is a good starting point. When we add the number of resources available on the internet it turns out JS HTML and CSS are the best choices IMHO.
Sure, I work in Java on a daily basis and I can tell that it's way more complex than JS. I'm not an expert in a Python but the syntax looks webdev friendly.
The good thing about web development is that to make a simple functional interface all you need is actually few lines of code and a browser. And probably notepad. No compilers, no IDEs, nothing. Go on and try to make a GUI in Java or Python or whatever without setting up environment, downloading packages etc :P
Before I get hit by argument such as:
Sure, but I think this is what newbies want to do - make something more interactive than terminal if-else game :)
I mostly agreed with you up until your last point. Of course it's a bit more difficult to write a GUI in Java or Python, because JavaScript is designed for building user interfaces.
In the same way, I could say, "try building an efficient machine learning algorithm in JavaScript instead of Python", because Python is designed for data science.
You are right, I knew my example wasn't the best! We are talking about learning curve here and I believe that doing anything in a scripting language is easier than in high-level language if you are a beginner and you don't have special requirements.
Python is probably an exception - I don't know, I don't have much experience with python. I tried to learn it but I'm not into data science and all I wanted to do was possible with node.js :P.
Ok, I gotcha, and with that I'd mostly agree.
And same! I've never had to touch Python much, I pretty much use Vue + MongoDB for everything nowadays. ๐
Hi, I'm answering this from my own perspective:
Web development is visual, hence for folks that want to learn to code, it is the fastest way to see progress. Within minutes, one can spin a website.
My first programming language was C. The first thing I learned was the console, and how to print an excellent menu with it. The visual part satisfied me much, and I know I'm progressing.
Later on, I learned about pointers and memory stack and more fun C things, by that time, I was already in love with code and was happy to learn new stuff - as well as debug for days to fix bugs. I passed the getting hooked phase. I coded fun games with complex logic and poor UI - the consol/terminal was my UI, and I was proud of my accomplishments.
Was that sufficient for me to get a job? No, it was only part of my Computer Science Education.
Later on, I continued to Distributed Systems, mainly because I enjoy a good challenge.
Is it rewarding like building a beautifully animated game?
Yes and No, I rarely able to share happiness with most people that surround me daily. ( only at meetups and conferences with like-minded ) but, the compensation is good.
However, my personal mission is to help people get into distributed systems and Big Data development. So a week ago, I asked this on twitter:
Got some input out of it, but it didn't vary much and wasn't rich to draw insights and how I can help.
I hope more people will get into Distributed Systems and Distributed Data.
It is rewarding and holds unique challenges.
I spent the last two years pivoting from a career in banking to software engineering. While I'm still in school, I'm learning coding & developing applications and programs in my free time.
I think the first touchpoint I've ever had with programming, was creating spreadsheets I'm Excel. Most of my colleagues were 50+ years old and my job was to make a spreadsheet staff planner that was easy to understand and maintain - so, I completely overengineered it with conditional formatting, automated sorting and stuff like that - but it was super fun to build and present. I would even go as far as saying this created my inner motivation to dive deeper into programming.
A year later, after quitting my old job, I started Codecadamy's Python Introduction and found it nothing but boring. All I really did was printing some text so a console or calculating the taxes of some imaginery receipts or stuff like that. I neither felt productive nor excited.
Some months passed and I ditched the whole software thing. Then I stumbled upon HTML and CSS. And boy, that was easy as hell! I mean, I knew it wasn't real programming but was able to build a decent website after one afternoon of doc-skimming and tutorials. After building my first website I knew that this was the kind of thing I enjoy doing! So, I kept on adding stuff to my website. I discovered Bootstrap and my sites went as pretty as those of the big companies! I discovered JS and started to add features that required real programming! I discovered APIs to rebuilt technologies that before seemed like a black box to me. With ReactJS, I was able to create components or, like I explain it to others, create my own, improved HTML tags!
And even today, I'm mindblown with everything I learn. Today I started to play around with Backend WebDev, built my first server with node & express and I really like to learn more about it and going full-stack.
Long story short: Web was and still is the most rewarding journey for learning programmers. Every step gives you visual feedback and that motivates you to keep on learning.
Oh, and it doesn't mean that I won't learn any other thing afterwards - I'm even certain I will give Python a second chance as I'm interested in Web Scraping and building my own ghetto APIs.
In a couple of months I finally start my computer science degree. So I can learn the deeper roots of the stuff I'm working on in my free time and how to make it more productive - maybe I'll end up doing something completely different than web, but still I think it's the best way to start.
I've also wondered about this! I went to a full-stack development bootcamp and they wanted you to become exactly that... a full-stack developer. In our career classes, they talked about things like frontend vs backend development - but didn't even mention all of the other tech jobs that you can thrive in with a coding education. Things like technical writing, product management, QA engineering, devops, etc.
For me, it was more a path of least resistance. I initially wanted to do audio programming and DSP and eventually build a digital synthesizer. Learned python by accident thinking that was the way to go. After realizing I wouldnโt be able to build a plug-in for fl studio with python , I decided to start looking at other ways I could use my new skills so web development looked feasible. I ended up spending more time tinkering with JavaScript and ditched python altogether. After a few years in the game Iโm starting to explore where else I can put JS to work outside the context of the browser and a server, but at the same time wish I spent more time with C++. Now that I have a full time gig, my time is more valuable in terms of what I do outside of work. I can work with the tech I already know and love to better my future career opportunities but also want to seriously start doing some audio programming. Thereโs so much to do in the world of programming but so little time. Might just double down and dive deeper into the web. Who knows
I agree that there should be better diversity. At the same time, web development is a good foundation to pivot to any other field in dev/IT, etc.
There needs to be a good foundation, before you get into the specifics of related disciplines.
I think now there's a huge surge in data science and ML bootcamps though ๐คท๐ปโโ๏ธ
At the beginning I knew as an artist i just wanted to make not-breaking web things that would eventually help others, and hopefully in a facile way!
A thing I like to tell others is: figure out what you want to achieve whether it's hardware hacking, physical electronics, animation, mobile apps, robotics , websites, or games, and then work on learning the toolset for that... it would be otherwise too vast to expect to be a polyglot in <18 weeks
Speaking as someone who's not a web dev, I feel like nearly all introductory material is geared towards web development. I sometimes feel like I'm shouting into the void writing posts in Java and Scala.
I feel the same, kinda demotivates from trying to spend to much effort on anything that isn't web related, which is a shame.
I personally like the idea of going through the web technologies first and then get into proper programming. It's just been my observation that once people get comfortable with the language they've learnt , they stick to it without giving other languages a chance.
I get it, we are talking about all the things people can take up instead of just Web Dev.
So for people reading it, You've got
Embedded Systems Programming, OS Programming, Web Dev, Mobile Dev, Desktop Programming, the list is huge but a lot of these are kinda tricky if you jump into them directly without actually having a base of how programming is to be used in each case.
For CS students it should be comparatively easier since you have the history of each in our curriculum . For others I think it'll be a little more research to deal with.
I do agree with Ben that people should try for the others but I still think that going through the web path makes it a little more easier.
This is the path I would want someone to follow to actually get them to be open to all the possible fields that exist
HTML - gets you used to nesting and hierarchy.
CSS - you start to understand block scopes
JS - Easy to learn(hard to master) and you can get started with the environment really well.
Python - JS has got you hooked to the syntax, now all you need to understand is the program flow and maybe a change of keywords
Ruby - Another language you can pick up after JS
Go/Rust - at this point you understand programming enough to deal with systems level programming, you can literally learn go by trying to do web development and then use the gained knowledge for some other field
Now if we go back the chain, I've got
Web dev down (JS/RUBY/PYTHON, HTML, JS, CSS)
Systems Programming (GO/RUST)
AI/ML (Python / Go / Rust)
Embedded (Go / Rust)
at the end of the day , I think it really is the attitude of the person to grow into different fields, a lot of people stick to the field since it something that's easy and is gives them enough financial support to survive. On the other hand, people who actually grow fond of coding end up following the above path anyways, the order might be different or, they might jump a few of the above based on likes and dislike.
I don't see it like that. At least around me I know many that go to Python, leaning to DS. I have been in a Flutter meetup and yes, mobile devs are a few compared with web devs but, the community exists so...
Embedded programming and IoT is one field that is really tiny in did.
WebDev is of course the biggest field, and I see it fair because it has more traffic, more interactions, recollects more data, and probably moves more money than the other ones.
This is something I've been thinking about for a long time too. Whenever you see some bootcamps or courses on the web it's almost exclusive about web development, rarely about game development and pretty rarely about other fields.
I agree with the most comments here - three most important reasons for this are;
I believe the frontend is what people are most familiar with when it comes to development. When most people think of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc you typically think of the front facing user interface. Very few people ever have to think about how their data is handled in the backend at scale or how low level systems process that information. Therefore, web dev concepts are easier to grasp because of established familiarity as in the goal is clearer. That was my experience anyways. I was able to see the application (no pun intended) of what I was building.
Yep, social media is everywhere and is mostly web dev. Also if a business wants to sell online, well web dev again. And so on... you don't really "see" other stuff, besides a OS but people say "my laptop" or "my cellphone", like if it was one thing, they not usually separate the OS from the hardware in their minds.
I kinda think web development is more accessible and easier.
Within few months, you can be a productive developer in web. However, I cannot argue that this cannot happen in other fields because I have no idea really. Also, if you tell someone who has nothing to do with computers: "do you want to learn how to make a website?" it sounds doable. But if you say: "do you want to learn how to setup the entire communication system for any company?" or "do you wanna learn how to make computers as smart as humans?" they still sound geeky. Am I making sense? :/
Web dev dominates the market, I think that's the main reason. People go after the money, so it makes a lot of sense, economically at least.
Apart from that, assuming that by "web dev" you mean both front end and backend, web dev is of course an incredibly broad subject. Frontend frameworks, Javascript, React/Vue etcetera, CSS, databases, backends, it encompasses a huge range of subjects.
I've done a lot of things in the past - "enterprise development" (Java, Spring), mobile development, old fashioned desktop development, but since I've quit my "boss job" in the office and become a remote freelance developer I'm gradually dumping everything except web dev. Mobile dev is out the window, Java is almost gone ... focusing on web dev just makes a lot of sense.
P.S. two other "big" topic areas are (web) design and data science. Web design is obviously of vital importance already, and I wouldn't be surprised if data science becomes the next big thing, giving web dev a run for its money.
But, both these areas aren't pure "development", they're tangentially "related to" development.
I think that it is a quickness to hirablility thing. You can make basic frontends very quickly and easily and pickup the complex stuff as you go. With standalone applications you get into building and packaging, and we sefvixes need testing tools beyond just a web browser.
I also think that there is a TON of work at all levels for web development. Some businesses and people just want a simple site and there is a class of work that could be done by someone who is still early in their learning.
IMO, yes. Why? It's easy to pitch, easy to start, and has a history of being "easy to do" (a statement that I don't agree with).
I think more folks would be pushed towards data science, but, in my experience, people freak out when you put those two words together. You say "linear regression" and folks want to run, but really it's just a stats way to say "make a prediction from this data" (If you're a DS or Stats person, please don't hurt me lol).
I personally had a different experience, but I could be an exception to the rule. In 2016 I started a traineeship to become a Java developer. The traineeship was organised by the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration. The main focus for me at the time was Java SE and Java EE, I only got the basics for front-end technology (some HTML, Javascript and jQuery, but no actual front-end technologies like Angular, React of Vue). For the first two years of by Java career I also mainly worked on back-end systems. Nowadays I'm working more on a full-stack solution.
The thing with web development is that its really easy to start with.
No IDE is needed, everything works on the browser and the feedback is instant.
On the other hand, things can get complex when meeting real-life needs (network/performance issues..), which requires web developers to have a high level of engineering.
Personally, I think that the right path for development should involve both BE and FE, but as the FE domain is growing , more professionals are needed across many fields such as: CSS, UI frameworks, monitoring, tracking security, and even accessibility.
A complete beginner likely understands that the webโsomething they use every dayโis built by programmers. I'm unsure the same is true for, say, the radio in your car, or the traffic lights on your street. I definitely don't consider the programmers involved when I open a fresh can of Tide pods. I wonder just how many things we use on a daily basis were never touched by someone's code.
Someone has to change hard drives all day in data warehouses, someone has to teach toy robots to slap you when they see that you've taken damage in a game of Doom (saw this on Twitch a few days ago), someone needs to remap our bodies' electrical signals to control our bionic parts, etc.
Where are the bootcamps to automate farming and garbage collecting/processing? I think it's something to do with the law of large numbers. Imagine the difference between the number of web applications and the number of auto manufacturing robots that need to be programmed. Bootcamps are a business and exist for profit, so it's hard to imagine starting one up that focuses on such a small piece of the pie.
That's a neat thought exercise, and if anything, it made me think about how we really need more InfoSec bootcamps. I've been curious if cyber theft/espionage has been on the rise while we're all on lockdown, but I haven't had time to go looking for an answer.
The money is largely in web dev for young devs. I am one of them. But, I am trying to hone my skills in deployments that utilize raw programming so that I can shift over to software dev or any other pivots later on. It's just a great arena to get started in and can teach so many things that will be used later on.
Plus, the barrier to entry in software firms is much higher and they seem to look more carefully at credentials/pedigree/degrees. So, not having much in the way of that since I was self-taught, web dev is how I get my foot in the door and start building, which is what we all are here to do anyway.
I think web development is a nice first step to get beginners interested as web dev have a good market also it gives a good feeling of progress fairly quickly. Then they can be presented with other options like mobile dev, backend, devops etc. But youโre right I also feel sometimes beginners are pushed towards web dev more than other domains
Personally I feel like web is more marketed because its more accessible to people in education. I should say programming in general. To where trying to learn things like networking or other IT related fields are much harder to teach online and require much more physical hands on training.
In fact its a-lot o the reason why I got into programming is because, I wanted to do something in tech but I did not want to have to be tied to a physical school location to do so let alone pay thousands of dollars to do so. So i picked up web-development and game programming. And then Ironically ended up in other parts of the IT feild due to the area I am in.
I have to constantly remind young devs that there are indeed other aspects to programming than just "front end" and "back end" - they're so far down that rabbit hole that those are the only two worlds they think exist.
I wish I went for education in tech, probably would end in robotics/ai field or game industry. Instead my knowledge interests were spreaded all over the place so I ended not specialising in anything (economy, librarianship, publishing).
Webdev was something I did on the side and really enjoyed and felt passionate about, so I went for it full on several years ago, no regrets.
If I had chosen proper education before, maybe I would do something else!
Generally Web Dev is easy to learn and get a hang of it. You just have to learn HTML, CSS and JS which are pretty easy to learn. I agree that bootcamps usually teach Web Dev and they should add more stuff for DevOps, System Programming, IoT, Hacking open source games and etc. If it happens then I will really tell all my friends to do BootCamps. (I don't recommend them generally).
I just saw a 7 years-old kid on Twitter making a presentation on HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I watch it all out. All. of. it. He could have made a one-hour presentation I'm 100% sure I would have watched it until the end.
I think that speaks for itself.
Accessibility for beginners is one hell of an argument. Making a game in JavaScript requires pretty much nothing. You have a Web Browser (installed on most operating systems). You have a text editor (installed on most operating systems). You have all that you need to publish your first website. I'm so wrong, nowadays we can even develop without having a single tool installed in our computer with the rise of SaaS and PaaS.
While on the other hand, you'll have to installed so much tools for doing native applications for smartphones (if you have the necessary resources because I doubt this would hold on my 2009 computer with 4Go of RAM).
I could take on many other fields in CS but if we could do better, we would have to re-engineer so much things to make it more accessible (networking, system programming, ...). While in the Web ecosystem, it just takes an update of the browser to be able to communicate with the Bluetooth without too much hassle.
In my opinion, web development serves as the only way to actually show what else you have been doing. Web development becomes a force rather than a choice. I was in my first Hackathon, I made a deep learning model for solving the problem statements and presented my model on Anaconda prompt. The other guy did half of what I did but served the model using flask. Guess who won? He did. That's just one example, I wanted to do some ML / DL work for companies/individuals, I went with awesome proposals to them on how this can save up on a lot of people they need to employ for tasks that can be completely automated, all they were interested in was make an app for me, please make my website, etc. It seems like the only thing people want you to do.
Web development is a very broad term in my opinion, it can be front-end development, back-end development, it can only include some DevOps nowadays. What I mean is that almost everything nowadays has something related to the web, so...
Judging by bootcamps and all that, I think you mean mostly front-end development, Javascript centered, etc. I think this is because what is the market is seeking for the most part and that's what is available for entry-level jobs. What I see in other areas of IT is that companies think that people are born senior on that expertise. The requirements are just too high.
In my opinion, the reason behind this is its accessibility and exposure. You can start by randomly inspecting some web sites over the internet using the browser's DevTools. Also, it's affordable compared to other discipline that may require a more powerful setup or extra hardware to start with.
I worked many years in IT in the military, and the foremost skill it taught me is the ability to troubleshoot. Being able to understand the flow of data from input to output and how it's processed along the way, madeit pretty easy to identify and resolve issues. Working in IT, I used coding as an unofficial skill to make my life easier. For example, I was once required to install a hotfix on 40 machines without any software to deploy it. I spent some time writing a VScript program that used Microsoft's Windows Media Instrumentation (WMI) to remotely apply the hotfix and report the result. Once someone understands the problem, the ideas on how to solve it will be aplenty.
Languages vary by syntax and other design differences, but generally they operate similarly and thus are easy to pick up once you get the hang of just one of them. I think what's more important is the ability to understand and be able to work through problems. Once someone has that down, there's going to be few barriers for that person being able to move into other technical roles they hadn't anticipated.
I now work as a DevOps Engineer and I frickin' love it. My day is mostly a task list of problems that I have to solve, usually with code. I know this makes it seem like I'm the type of person who enjoys intellectual challenges, but I assure you I'm not ๐คช. The problems I encounter in tech are just different.
it is true because of lots of guys now days we are living in 21st century lots of schools and colleges teaching HTML/CSS and basics of JavaScript at the time of primary education from that lots of good students and good folks coming in this web development world .and students like me learning things by self taught thing and others thing is web development comparatively easy means we only need know how to use computer and that's also we can do whatever we want. but i really sending thank you to you because our dev team doesn't made paid membership because of that i am getting good resources .thank you and all god bless you all .words are from my heart thank you Ben and Jessiโค take care all....
Well theres always "something big" in the market when you're just out of college. In the early 90s the big thing was Windows development. Most jobs revolved around your mastery of WIN16 and WIN32 APIs and MFC and such. Also you needed to know C and C++. Not knowing this meant that most cool companies would pass you up.
These days the platforms we are programming for are AWS and Azure. That's the "computer" we're developing for. And they speak the language of the web. Mobile was an option for a while but the emphasis to make apps super cheap limited the amount of money behind these platforms and the Android vs IOS conundrum is lately being solved with React Native and other such Javascript technology.
So yeah.. The web is the big thing for now.
Data science is an alternative, and related Big Data backend as well. But its all for the same platform: AWS or Azure.
Even OS development is down compared to the 80s and 90s where "new OSes" where vying for people's attention. Nothing is really new these days.. just Windows vs Unix variants.
I think they predict majority wishes to start with the web dev, mainly because we are surrounded with web every day. of course we are surrounded by other fields too, but web dev can be seen instantly ( get some HTML + CSS together ) and you have a visual demo in a minute.
When you start in this field, you can get overwhelmed by all the different fields, technologies, titles etc. and web development seems the least daunting. Does that make sense?
I think it's just easier to start with. I'm working on the websphere as well.
If you want to be a devops you need to understand what problem they solve.
if you want to be an architect you first need to be an experienced developer.
If you want to be a UX designer you need to have experience with nagging customers who can't use your app to appreciate the need.
But a junior web dev? Either frontend or backend, you just need to throw code. No concern about scalability usability etc. Only the viability of code is assessed and you learn that through code reviews.
So why web dev and not any other kind of dev? I believe this is due to the abundance of jobs. Web dev jobs are far more than mobile or desktop dev jobs I think.
Also, I don't think this is a criterion but watching your work live is very rewarding.
I don't normally respond to the "Here's a question - now, discuss..." posts. But I think this is a great conversation starter!
IMHO, the question comes down to how we're defining "newer developer". If someone is truly brand spankin' new to development, then I really believe that web development is a fabulous place to start. Why?? Because, if you have a web browser, and you're just starting to dip your toes into programming, then you have a "development environment".
As a 20+ year pro at this, it's easy for me to forget just how challenging it was for me "back in the day" to simply get a local environment up and running. I started doing PHP in 1998 (NOT a typo). And at that time, I had no friggin clue how to run PHP locally (or anything else, for that matter). I had to write my code locally, then FTP it up to the server, then refresh the live page to see the result of my changes. If that sounds entirely amateurish, it's because I was entirely amateurish.
In today's environment, it's an amazing benefit to be able to write some code locally, refresh a browser, and BAM!!!, there's the result of my new hacked-up code! This is not an inconsequential benefit. If you're just getting started, and you're trying crank out your first lines of Java or C# (or... whatever), it can be incredibly challenging for the extreme-noob to even see the results of his/her changes. As "experienced" devs, it can be easy to forget just how challenging it can be to get a "Hello World!" example up-and-running for the true neophytes.
In that respect, I think that web-based development is a tremendous benefit to introducing people to code for the first time.
But I sense a larger question. Once you know how to get your "Hello World!" code running (in any environment), is it "beneficial" to keep routing new devs toward the web sphere?? Umm... probably not. Learning to code outside the warm, comforting environs of a browser is a valuable skill. Perhaps, even... an undervalued skill. And it can make you think of your code (even, your web-based code), in a more "universal" sense.
I've also noticed that the extreme focus on JavaScript leads many brand-new devs to learn the raw nuts-and-bolts of application logic - without having any broader understanding for how that logic is presented to the user. In other words, I've seen some new JS devs that are, honestly, getting quite proficient with the "raw logic" of their initial apps - and yet... they have frightfully little knowledge of HTML or CSS or any other "ancillary" technology that's ultimately critical to being a true "developer".
I think the two biggest reasons are low barrier to entry and the fast-moving pace of the web dev world. When things are constantly changing, it can drive demand, and with a low barrier to entry a lot of people will embrace these changes to meet that demand.
I think more diversity in paths would be awesome, but like others have said, the other paths are kind of stumbled into and imo aren't that glamorous (but can be just as exciting). I started out in technical writing, and that seems common for so many folks in tech, but I seldom see or hear it talked about. It's a great career, but marketing will never tell you that
Its true of why I know anything about it, but its not bootcamps my dude its high paying jobs with a relatively low bar to entry due to the overwhelming demand for it and for anything relating to it via Javascript and its not a bad place to weed out the people who enjoy it enough to contribute to dev/IT overall from the multitudes after easy money that would engorge on the free snacks in the lunch room and leave the rest of us stuck with their work too.
Having come in first to Linux and expanded in every direction from there, it seems that the biggest thing creating the entrance funnel in web development other than market pressures is probably that web development is the easiest for people who are tech illiterate to comprehend in the first place as the jargon in this industry makes it nearly impossible to wrap your head around at first, if you aren't already somewhat into linguistics. There is a lot of distance between the world of the dev and popular culture because its something people aren't into or its something so heavily wrapped in incomprehensible jargon that how could anyone even be into it without getting their foot in the door through some specific interest that impacted them ?(most people and the internet, me and the Linux)
It is the counterpart to the academic path of computer science or software engineering which often involve very abstract content and I have seen many students cancel their undergrad programs. Web dev in contrast can lead to fast results and require few to no prior knowledges so the potential customer base is huge compared to those who survive math or classes at the undergrad programs.
They're more so pushed to in-house technical recruiters
I think that Web dev is a classic "easy to learn, hard to master" path. It is more appealing at first.
Data mining requires a phd idk haha
I am in the final year of BCA in college. So I can surely say that Web Development is very.... not overrated but it's too much popular with everyone around me. Everyone wants to become Web Developer. Even I have that same goal but recently I am also exploring other fields. Whatever I have heard till date is everyone feels that Web Development is very easy. Everyone feel HTML CSS JS is easy and the output also looks pretty great. No one wants to work on C, C++. 2 out of 3 students are either intrested or want to become Web developer.
HTML, css, js seem to be the way... I am much more interested in python or even ruby but always get told to stick to JS.
There are other fields????!!
I see a lot of students obsessing over machine learing and deep learning as well. They start there and slowly come down to webdev after couple of attempts.
The obsession of ML decreases at the very moment they are told that it involves complex mathematics. Many students are unguided and also threatened about the complexity and difficulty they would face while working on ML. So most of them drop the idea at the very beginning and web dev is a great option as it looks easy.
I think most of them are, because of the ease to install a webdev environment, I think it's much easier to install a environment on windows (the most common OS) of node than one of c++
Let's organize to write more about mobile, videogame development... and so on!
Does anyone have any experience with Lambda School?
Yes.
Though I would say pulled or drawn, rather than pushed.