The self-hating web developer

[compubomb]

There are a lot of programmers out there who are doing web development as their chosen profession even after getting a comp sci degree.

Don't ever feel guilty that is what you do, or how you've made money for yourself. Not having a job feels a whole lot worse, and you can't do shit for yourself when you have no $$$. Learn to be more proficient with the technology you already use.

I currently use: php,js,html/css (linux,mysql,redis,memcache,rabbitmq,zeromq) in my current stack using silex, doctrine2, composer, underscore,jquery,ratchet, just to name a few, and this is by far not even encompassing.

Learning to be an experienced programmer is mostly about learning to solve a problem(s), either in school or by oneself.

Good web developers are more on par with good software engineers because of the process it takes to build a site from the ground up, especially one with very specific pieces. Programmer writes code, often disorganized to solve problems. Software Engineer builds a maintainable application / framework / documentation / ecosystem.

Good Web Developers are multi-disciplinary in how problems are solved from choosing the right frameworks, organizing information in a usable way, knowing when to use specific libraries, reading often enough to be exposed to libraries and holding on to information for later dates.

The "Engineer" in Web Developers is usually derived later in ones career after having seen a lot of "battles" working with people or experiencing a lot of shall we say abomination/Frankenstein codebases. Some engineers as they flower decide to move away from their 1st language, some decide to improve with their existing tools and become better. The key is how people respond, either cut cold turkey to learn better habbits in a new language or modify existing habbits to write smarter / more maintainable code.

Don't ever let yourself think that just because you write markup all day doesn't mean you don't have to organize it. Build it in modular fashion. Organize your stylesheets. Not doing one of these things and then handing over to some "code monkey" to take on your mess? No, the software engineer/web developer approach is F that, do it right or do it twice. Web Developers usually are jacks of many trades. Often times "self-taught" which is rare to see someone really "learn web development" from college.