web designers/devs/etc - come hither!

[pontifex]

How do you like your jobs? Do you find it challenging and/or exciting or is it monotonous, tedious, and boring? Describe your typical day.

This is what the local CC offers: Community College Associate's Degree program. Does that look like it might be a good program?

If I did decide to do this, anything in particular I should know in advance?

Thanks.

 

[OdiN]

Oh....it's not my job, I just do it here and there.

Most of the stuff I would think you could learn from books or whatever. In my experience, community colleges really don't offer very good art or design programs - I took some at the CC that I went to and they sucked horribly and I learned nothing.

But then I had already been using Photoshop since 3.0 and made my first web page in 7th grade, so maybe it was just me

 

[torpid]

Looks like a decent program, although I think the ColdFusion class should be completely eliminated (don't take that). Note that the program seems much more oriented towards development than design.

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: pontifex
Do you find it challenging and/or exciting or is it monotonous, tedious, and boring? Describe your typical day.

Challenging, not particularly, nor exciting, however definitely not monotonous. At the rate things change on the interwebs, after one year of work your job effectively transforms into something different. There's plenty of regular post-work reading and learning, so if you want to go home and completely separate yourself from your job at 5pm, it's the wrong line of work. The job requires a considerable amount of community involvement if you don't want to get stuck in the mediocre gear.

It's something you don't get away from unless you intend to manage a table layout for your local grocery store for the next 10 years.

The typical day is looking at lots of code, that's pretty much it. It's the perfect example of torture for most people, but this isn't at all the case if you have an interest in the technology. If you consider programming a chore, you will probably make more as a fast food manager. Without some peculiar fascination with computers that craves the use of your machine manipulation overlord powers, it's probably going to be a failing dead end venture. I've seen the work of people that program simply because the college teacher says that in the year 2008 they have to... it's not pretty.

As for the community college program, it's going to be the biggest waste of money in your life. If you're getting it for free, it's going to be the biggest waste of time. If you feel it's necessary for you to be taking an entry level general computation and communications course that is only vaguely associated with modern development practices, it's better you forget the whole thing altogether. If you're serious about it, the best way to learn is books and hands-on work. Being practically free is a very nice side benefit.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: pontifex
Do you find it challenging and/or exciting or is it monotonous, tedious, and boring? Describe your typical day.

Challenging, not particularly, nor exciting, however definitely not monotonous. At the rate things change on the interwebs, after one year of work your job effectively transforms into something different. There's plenty of regular post-work reading and learning, so if you want to go home and completely separate yourself from your job at 5pm, it's the wrong line of work. The job requires a considerable amount of community involvement if you don't want to get stuck in the mediocre gear.

It's something you don't get away from unless you intend to manage a table layout for your local grocery store for the next 10 years.

The typical day is looking at lots of code, that's pretty much it. It's the perfect example of torture for most people, but this isn't at all the case if you have an interest in the technology. If you consider programming a chore, you will probably make more as a fast food manager. Without some peculiar fascination with computers that craves the use of your machine manipulation overlord powers, it's probably going to be a failing dead end venture. I've seen the work of people that program simply because the college teacher says that in the year 2008 they have to... it's not pretty.

As for the community college program, it's going to be the biggest waste of money in your life. If you're getting it for free, it's going to be the biggest waste of time. If you feel it's necessary for you to be taking an entry level general computation and communications course that is only vaguely associated with modern development practices, it's better you forget the whole thing altogether. If you're serious about it, the best way to learn is books and hands-on work. Being practically free is a very nice side benefit.

thanks...thats kinda what i figured but i wanted to make sure before i totally ruled it out.

well, throw another job on the list of jobs i don't want to do...

why is it so difficult for me to find a career i might like?

 

[compman25]

Is that the zanejohnson web design program?

 

[Safeway]

Website designing is one thing. Web architecture designing is another. Which did you have in mind?

Graphic design is amazingly fun. When I had my Wacom Intuos3, it was amazing how awesome things came out in Photoshop.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: Safeway
Website designing is one thing. Web architecture designing is another. Which did you have in mind?

Graphic design is amazingly fun. When I had my Wacom Intuos3, it was amazing how awesome things came out in Photoshop.

i thought they were pretty much the same thing...
i'm not very artistic in the drawing sense.

 

[Safeway]

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: Safeway
Website designing is one thing. Web architecture designing is another. Which did you have in mind?

Graphic design is amazingly fun. When I had my Wacom Intuos3, it was amazing how awesome things came out in Photoshop.

i thought they were pretty much the same thing...
i'm not very artistic in the drawing sense.

One is graphics and layout. One is programming the framework and backend.

 

[ppdes]

Coding is the best part of my day. I find puzzling out neat ways to accomplish a bit of data manipulation or UI functionality entertaining and rewarding. I'm certain I'd get bored of manual labor the first day, but with coding you are always writing something new.

The worst part of my day is when the business office makes a 180 and forces a rewrite of a large portion of an application because they refuse to settle on a solid set of requirements.

Unfortunately the majority of my day is running around putting out fires as people run into esoteric bugs left by my predecessors or get mad because they didn't understand they couldn't keep using an expired certificate and things like that.

If you do take a job in this field, make damn sure it involves a minimum amount of support work.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: ppdes
Coding is the best part of my day. I find puzzling out neat ways to accomplish a bit of data manipulation or UI functionality entertaining and rewarding. I'm certain I'd get bored of manual labor the first day, but with coding you are always writing something new.

Was trying to wing it with some Cold Fusion today at work and felt the same way

 

[Corbett]

I wouldnt suggest going into any sort of web design. India has overtaken the industry. $250 for a fully customized flash website? $1000 for a fully loaded backend of a website? Can't compete with that.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
Challenging, not particularly, nor exciting, however definitely not monotonous. At the rate things change on the interwebs, after one year of work your job effectively transforms into something different. There's plenty of regular post-work reading and learning, so if you want to go home and completely separate yourself from your job at 5pm, it's the wrong line of work. The job requires a considerable amount of community involvement if you don't want to get stuck in the mediocre gear.

YMMV. I do sometimes find it challenging, but occasionally monotonous. In eight years of being a web developer, I've never cracked a work-related book after 5PM and I can't say it's hurt me.

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
YMMV. I do sometimes find it challenging, but occasionally monotonous. In eight years of being a web developer, I've never cracked a work-related book after 5PM and I can't say it's hurt me.

Never said it will hurt you but it won't help you move up. Unless you have plenty of time to read during work, which is convenient.

 

[tfinch2]

I guess you could say I'm a web developer at the moment, but not in the traditional sense. I use web tools as a GUI to control my back-end applications running on a virtual appliance. I don't find it monotonous, tedious, or boring at all.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
As for the community college program, it's going to be the biggest waste of money in your life. If you're getting it for free, it's going to be the biggest waste of time. If you feel it's necessary for you to be taking an entry level general computation and communications course that is only vaguely associated with modern development practices, it's better you forget the whole thing altogether. If you're serious about it, the best way to learn is books and hands-on work. Being practically free is a very nice side benefit.

How is what you wrote any different from a university course in computer science?