Web developer and/or designer skills

[Subotai]

I'm prepping for my next career move. I have recent experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, WordPress, Photoshop, Cascade Server. I'm not a guru, but I think I'm decent enough. And in the past did a smattering of VB.Net, C/C++/C#, and a lot of SQL and Shell programming. I'm SQL Server certified but don't fancy DBA work.

So my question is, do you try to stay varied, or do you try to specialize in something really well before moving on to the next technology. I'm trying to decide whether to really beef up JavaScript or move into PHP. How would you approach this age-old dilemma of trying to manage your skill set?

[ocabj]

You need to know PHP. If you know C++, PHP should be fairly simple to pick up. You should also know Perl, Java, and Ruby. Perl, simply because it's still a versatile interpreted language. Java in the event you need to write Tomcat servlets. Ruby (on Rails) because it's a very agile and scalable full-stack framework.

You should also learn Puppet.

https://puppetlabs.com/

Even if you're a developer and not an IT Administrator, Puppet is pretty much becoming integrated within all facets of IT related services with regards to deployment. If you write an scalable application, you're most likely going to deploy it to all the nodes via Puppet. A former colleague of mine went to work for a big name web company (they own hundreds of website 'brands'; ones that you probably visit on an occasional basis), and Puppet admin duties was his primary role.

As far as picking up new skills, I pretty much just learn stuff as I need to in order to deploy/implement something.

[speedrrracer]

I'm prepping for my next career move. I have recent experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, WordPress, Photoshop, Cascade Server. I'm not a guru, but I think I'm decent enough. And in the past did a smattering of VB.Net, C/C++/C#, and a lot of SQL and Shell programming. I'm SQL Server certified but don't fancy DBA work.

So my question is, do you try to stay varied, or do you try to specialize in something really well before moving on to the next technology. I'm trying to decide whether to really beef up JavaScript or move into PHP. How would you approach this age-old dilemma of trying to manage your skill set?

It depends on what you're trying to target. Startups or big firms? Mobile apps or webapps? If you're aiming at tiny startups, you'll need to be a generalist, and wear many hats. So you don't want to focus too much on any one thing, and instead make sure you don't have major weaknesses. Expect to do work on everything from the pbx system to db triggers to android apps to CSS. Startups tend to be more trendy, so you might notice more flavor-of-the-month stuff like Ruby, parse, node, mongoDB, chef, et al.

If you're aiming to work for, say, Qualcomm, it helps to be strong at either server side or front end, for example, as big companies tend to have more specialized roles. Big companies tend to prefer more established tech, such as C++ / C# / Java / Oracle. At a big firm, you may end up working in just one tiny corner of some app, and therefore need to be really strong at just one tech.

These are just tendencies I've observed, not absolutes. In any event, there are certain "musts" for a web developer, such as strong html5 / css / javascript on the front end and your preferred server-side language + OS knowledge on the backend. You shouldn't be ignorant of mobile app development, even if you're not an expert.

To answer your question, you want both Javascript and php.

[Subotai]

Good info. After reading more blogs, this thread, etc., I think I have to do more JavaScript. And delay PHP....again.... Oh well, them's the breaks!

[rjpsb1]

The future of web apps is HTML5 + various up and coming adjuncts to it like websockets. http://www.html5rocks.com/en/ is a great resource.

The cool kids are all doing Angular, Ember, or similar front end/JS MVC frameworks with Node or Sinatra or something similar on the back end to provide API servers.

Take a look at Cordova/PhoneGap also. You can write apps in JS and build them for iOS, Android, Winphone, and BB.

[bellearwood]

I took the mobile application developer course and it was worth it. The salary scale is reasonable enough and it helped me get into a career of my dreams!