BreakingIntoWebDev.markdown

Breaking into Web Development

I work as an analyst contractor, these days my roles are often a mixture of development and management. I have been asked by a countless number of people what they need to do to get the jobs I’m offered – and it’s simpler than most expect. The market for talented developers in the United Kingdom (and in many talent-lite communities around the world) is such that anyone who merely knows what they are doing has a very good chance of getting a job. Even a job contracting (which ordinarily has senior-level requirements).

To become a web developer with a good salary and employment expectations you need skills. Below I’ll provide a plan to get you towards the top of the largest market: PHP Web Development. Advanced knowledge of everything on this list would immediately make you one of the best, so just strive to have an exposure if not a comprehensive understanding (though the *starred points are essential). To learn these technologies you should use several in combination on one of the projects listed at the bottom (as well as on ideas of your own). Applied knowledge is much more useful than theoretical, good interviews will often asked about problems encountered to demonstrate that you do actually know your stuff.

When you have completed projects, you can upload them to github (or another public repo) and get help & feedback from the community via freednode irc (##php, etc.) or reddit (/r/php, /r/webdev) etc.

When it comes to writing a CV (resume) for web dev. positions having this code available on a public respository will do wonders for your credibility. You do not need to have commercial experience to get a job. On a CV you can discuss these projects, the technology you used, its pluses/negatives. You should expand on any work you have done (outside of dev. included) that shows you are reliable and personable. Aim to demonstrate enough knowledge that interviewing you will be worth their time. Remember that many companies would prefer to hire a personable developer that they can train up than a highly skilled developer that is difficult to work with.

Languages

Basic Programming

• http://www.codecademy.com/

PHP*

• http://php.net/manual/en/index.php
• http://devzone.zend.com/6/php-101-php-for-the-absolute-beginner/

Javascript*

• http://www.codecademy.com/

SQL* (+ Stored Proceedures)

• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/databases/sql-for-beginners/
• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/stored-routines.html
• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/an-introduction-to-stored-procedures/

HTML*

• http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/
• http://html5tutorial.net/

CSS*

• http://www.htmldog.com/guides/cssbeginner/
• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/html-5-and-css-3-the-techniques-youll-soon-be-using/

One of Python, Ruby, Java, Scala, Clojure and one of C, C++, D Haskell

• http://docs.python.org/tutorial/
• http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html

Tech

Apache*

• http://www.sitepoint.com/installing-apache-tutorial/

MySQL*

• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/tutorial.html

Mongo or CouchDB

• http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Tutorial/

In-Memory (/Cache) DBs redis & memcached

• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/faster-php-mysql-websites-in-minutes/
• http://phpmaster.com/an-introduction-to-redis-in-php-using-predis/

Linux Admin*

• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/how-to-setup-a-dedicated-web-server-for-free/

Development for Heroku, AWS, AppEngine or similar

• https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/quickstart

Exposure to Node.js

• http://howtonode.org/

Knowledge

Best Pratice PHP development*

• http://www.phptherightway.com

Secuity

• http://phpsec.org/projects/guide/

Testing* & Quality Assurance

• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/test-driven-development-in-php-first-steps/
• http://phpqatools.org/

OOP*

• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/real-world-oop-with-php-and-mysql/

Functional Programming

• http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html
• http://jburrows.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/the-state-of-functional-programming-in-php-5-3-x/
• http://blog.lcf.name/2011/12/functional-programming-in-php.html

MVC*

• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/create-your-first-tiny-mvc-boilerplate-with-php/

Javascript object-functional programming

• http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163419.aspx

CSS3, HTML5 development & Mobile

• http://mobile.tutsplus.com/

Performance and Scaling

• http://www.slideshare.net/duleepa/scaling-a-web-site-oscon-tutorial
• http://bitkickers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/nginx-ssl-reverse-proxy-tutorial.html
• http://code.flickr.com/blog/2010/02/08/using-abusing-and-scaling-mysql-at-flickr/

Living with Legacy*

• http://www.slideshare.net/crnixon/dealing-with-legacy-php-applications
• http://www.slideshare.net/rowan_m/living-with-legacy-code

Licencing

• http://fosswire.com/post/2007/04/the-differences-between-the-gpl-lgpl-and-the-bsd/
• http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
• http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_licenses

Development Software

Svn, Git*

• http://try.github.com/levels/1/challenges/1
• http://maverick.inria.fr/~Xavier.Decoret/resources/svn/index.html

Ubuntu, ssh, rsync

• http://troy.jdmz.net/rsync/index.html

One of Netbeans, PHPStorm, Eclipse, nuSphere, Zend Studio, etc.

• http://netbeans.org/features/php/

One of TextMate, gEdit, Notepad++, etc.

• http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

One of vim, nano, emacs, etc.

• http://www.vim.org/download.php
• http://blog.interlinked.org/tutorials/vim_tutorial.html

Phpmyadmin

• http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php

One of Capistrano, phing, composer, etc.

• http://nelm.io/blog/2011/12/composer-part-1-what-why/

Open Source Libraries

Zend Framework and one of Sympony, Cake, Kohana and one of Lithum, Fuel, Silex

• http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/learning.quickstart.intro.html/
• http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/index.html
• http://silex.sensiolabs.org/

jQuery and Backbone.js, Underscore.js

• http://andyet.net/blog/2010/oct/29/building-a-single-page-app-with-backbonejs-undersc/
• http://jquery.com/
• http://backbonejs.org/
• http://underscorejs.org/

One of Mustache, Twig, etc.

• http://mustache.github.com/

Phpdoc

• http://www.phpdoc.org/

PHPUnit

• https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpunit/
• http://www.phpunit.de/manual/3.7/en/index.html

Phar

• http://php.net/manual/en/book.phar.php

Projects (to write yourself!)

In PHP

Analytical (Pure PHP)

MVC Framework with Routing using PHP5.2

• http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/creating-a-php5-framework-part-1/

MVC Framework with new features of PHP5.3 OR ORM framework

• http://techportal.inviqa.com/2010/01/11/learning-php-5-3-by-writing-your-own-orm/

REST layer over RMDBS

• http://www.gen-x-design.com/archives/create-a-rest-api-with-php/

API library for one of paypal, amazon, ebay, google, etc.

• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/tutorials/os-php-webservice/

Mixed

• Basic CRUD Form/Survey/Guestbook website
• Blog using the above libraries
• Shopping Cart/Ecommerce project using these libraries
• Social Networking Site (either microblogger, group sharing, etc.)
• Chat (Rooms)
• File Manager
• Online Build/Deployment Manager (upload & deploy phars?)

In Javascritpt

Single page application using jQuery/Backbone

• http://www.noupe.com/tutorial/jquery-mobile-tutorial-creating-a-restaurant-picker-web-app.html

HTML5 Mobile Application using Twitter Bootstrap

• http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/complete-websites/twitter-bootstrap-101-introduction/

Node.js & NoSQL db app

• http://howtonode.org/express-mongodb

Meta

• Write documentation and tutorials on your own code
• Write coding standards
• Write designs for different applications you have seen online (how would you design facebook?)
• Outline the way you work, from how you start to deploy to support projects

**Research other solutions to the above problems and compare with your own. **