

Ask HN:Need advice regarding career - desigooner

Dear HN,<p>I am currently working as a Web/ FileMaker Developer for a university. Lately though, it's just been managing projects and more of FileMaker work vs. web development. With a few personal issues and this scenario, I haven't really been able to devote time to development and learning and lost touch so as to speak. Ultimately, I'd really want to start something of my own but I feel I am at loss to hack it because I am not as strong at development  as I used to be a few years ago. I feel I've missed out on a lot of newer technologies that are becoming a standard today.<p>With rapidly changing scenario in terms of the web technologies (viz. Ruby, Python, PHP5, NoSQL, Cloud computing, et al.), what would be the best path to reboot myself and bring myself up to speed with the going-ons today. Also, what would be the direction to go in as far as working on something new in education or web in general goes?!<p>Pardon me if the my question isn't too coherent.
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samratjp
Definitely build a project by learning a few of those technologies. It's ok to
start out learning with a framework (Ruby on Rails is pretty acceptable as a
framework and easy enough to start with; same could be said with Django). I
recommend this <http://www.railstutorial.org/> It's meant to be newbie
friendly and it will teach you a lot of those things you mentioned above
(Ruby, SQLite, Version control with git + github, Test Driven Development via
RSpec, and cloud hosting via Heroku) while building a twitter clone. After
that you should build your own projects and you will run into new questions
and problems that will dictate your learning. Also don't worry about not
knowing Ruby, the book will teach you. If you are too unmotivated but have 15
minutes to spend, try this completely: <http://tryruby.org/>

And don't fret too much about changing web technologies. Sometimes, you just
have to keep your calm and focus on what matters - essential hacking skills
and fundamentals.

~~~
desigooner
THanks for the pointers. I'll look into RailsTutorials.

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adrianscott
Build a project and put it online. That's the best path, imho. Good luck, go
for it, and make it a priority. Just get something working up and online, no
matter how simple or embarassing. ;)

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gexla
Niche work might be better than being a more general web developer. There is
less competition and you can generally charge better rates for the niche
stuff. So you might start out looking at what work is out there for the
FileMaker side (I know nothing about that.)

Also, managing projects isn't a bad way to go. Making sales is probably the
most important part of web development. If you can make the sales then you
could start building a web development team (probably a remote team) and have
them do the work while you manage the projects. This is risky because devs can
flake out on your or you could lose money by underestimating jobs but if you
get it right then it could be a better money maker than working solo.

If none of the above will work for you now, then you might be best off
starting out building sites in something like Wordpress, Drupal,
ExpressionEngine, etc. The reason is that there is a huge market for working
existing designs (I'm assuming you are a developer as opposed to a
designer)into a CMS so the client can easily update the site. A CMS like
Wordpress is pretty easy to get started with, doesn't require a lot of
technical skill and often you won't need to do anything crazy with PHP
(ExpressionEngine requires little to no PHP knowledge.)

This will get you started. If you feel that you want to go more the route of
custom applications rather than working with content management systems then
you could start branching out as you get more comfortable with your dev
skills. At this point, go ahead and start researching different scripting
languages and the tools / libraries available for each to decide which is the
best fit for you. Again, keep your market in mind for it. PHP is a great money
maker because of the market size, but you also have a lot more low cost
competition. The more niche you go, the lower the competition and the better
the rates, but you might also have a harder time finding work.

There have been a lot of other posts on hacker news for how to get started. If
you already have a great source of work then you are already ahead of the
game. If not, then you need to start making a name for yourself. You could hit
the pavement and look for local clients but you also need to be able to bring
in clients from elsewhere. Use your knowledge to help people where paying
clients hang out (Wordpress help forums for example.) Build Wordpress add-ons
and give them away (but selling add-ons could also be a good money maker.)
Setup Twitter for answering questions and finding people who are looking for
paid help. Build your freelance site and use that site for support for your
add-ons and posting tutorial

I mentioned Wordpress as an example, but you could substitute that with any
CMS. Potential goldmines are new up and coming systems which have exploding
numbers of new users but have a relatively low developer base. If developers
are relatively hard to find, but the demand is high, then you have as much
work as you like. I can't think of any examples off-hand, so you would have to
do a bit of searching. Also, paid systems are great because the clients
interested in those systems are already willing to dish out some cash and
lower paid competition generally sticks with free systems.

As for advancing technology, it doesn't change as fast as you might think. The
bleeding edge moves fast and you have to keep training yourself, but the edge
must still keep the caboose in sight.

Bonus: Learn Javascript as well as one of the more popular frameworks such as
Jquery. It doesn't matter which server side scripting language you learn, you
will be using JS.

~~~
desigooner
Thanks for the valuable advice :)

I did work on Drupal 5 and FileMaker (wrote custom modules to publish and
submit data to/from FileMaker on Drupal sites) and some custom work for
Wordpress a few years ago along with jQuery tweaks (although never really had
the time to learn jQuery from scratch .. it was more of reverse
engineering/hacking than development)

As far as my background, I am a developer vs. a designer, with a masters in
computer communications and an interest in security.

i just started perusing HN recently and plan to be active with the community
in my bid to learn and possibly offer my knowledge and assistance to the
community.

Is there a good site/reference that would list needs and wants for CMSes or
Open Source projects? THe problem for me with freelancing is that I don't
really have any recent projects for a portfolio site (plus most of my work was
confidential)

Thanks again.

~~~
gexla
A good site/reference for needs and wants for a CMS or open source project?

This is tricky when you first get started because you haven't had enough
experience to know the pain points and missing parts of the CMS. Once you get
a bit of experience, you will know what is really needed but missing. Here are
some other tips though.

Find highly popular add-ons which are horribly outdated. Wordpress has a list
of add-ons and shows the ratings, numbers of downloads and other information.
If the plugin is way outdated (perhaps doesn't even work with the latest
version of Wordpress) then you might have a good candidate for something to
recreate and keep maintained. Alternatively you could find add-ons which are
working with the newest versions and perhaps even somewhat recent but appear
abandoned.

Look for hugely useful and popular add-ons or features for one CMS which has
no equivalent in another CMS. In some cases the feature / add-on might only be
feasible for a certain CMS but in other cases this could signify a need.

Check through feature request areas of the forums. If someone is requesting a
feature which could be added via a third party plugin, then you might have a
candidate. If there are 100 "me too" replies to the thread, then get to work!

~~~
desigooner
thanks for the tip .. i'll definitely try and do the same once I'm comfortably
re-acquainted with wordpress and possibly drupal..

