I am looking into the web development field and will probably enroll in a coding bootcamp like bloc, firehoseproject, and all other sorts of bootcamps (if you prefer one over the other please throw your 2 cents in on which one is worth it). I guess what I'm getting at here are the bootcamps really worth it? Is web development a growing field? How hard is it to get a job as a Junior Web Developer..

1) what coding experience do you already have?
2) do you have a college degree?
3) have you made web pages before? not necessary coding. maybe you have a web design background?
4) why do you want to be a web developer?

before you join any sort of bootcamp, i'd suggest you go over some tutorials for html, css, javascript.

if you have no coding experience, never made a web page, and don't have a college degree, then question 4 is very important.

a lot of people with no experience in coding find it overwhelming or difficult and give up. so make sure you get a taste of it before you decide on it for your career.

This post was edited by carteblanche on Sep 6 2015 04:28pm

I have completed the basic tutorial on "Codecademy" on HTML & CSS and a little bit of Java. I have no degree in computer science or anything. I don't want to be a full stack developer.. Just front end with a little back-end experience. But I was just wondering if the field is still growing and it would be a good career path. Always had a passion for coding & finding out how things work. But I am worried I would be wasting money because I wouldn't be going to college.. But I've heard its possible.

html/css are more on the web design spectrum. if that's what you enjoy, i'd suggest looking into web design. you also say "front end". i'm not sure if you're confusing web design vs web development or you really only want to work on front end development. not that it's bad, i'm just not sure which you're referring to based on your listed skillset.

i'd suggest not taking one of those expensive(?) bootcamps yet. there's a great deal you can learn on your own, and i doubt those bootcamps will improve your resume much. spend a bit more time with html / css, then focus on javascript (jquery / angularjs / etc) and web development in general, understanding things like sessions and headers and whatnot. for someone without a degree, you need to show what you can do. create a website showcasing some of the things you can do. i got a list of stuff on my backburner if you're looking for ideas.

as for whether it's a "good career path", that depends on how you define "good" and your location. are you gonna get rich from it? no. will you be able to afford a living for a family of 4? sure. will your ideal job be 10 minute drive from your house? maybe, maybe not.


no offense, but i don't see a whole lot of passion so far.

This post was edited by carteblanche on Sep 6 2015 07:34pm

you can always tell when you meet a passionate one, because when they tell you about the cool bare bones emulator they wrote, they never fail to mention how the "wife" or "girlfriend" just doesn't get it and gets in the way most of the time.

lmfao

For me as a web designer it's really hard actually to find a good web developer, lol.
All of them so far, did such poor job with optimizing and doing responsive website

Highly debatable, arguably one of the most rewarding and exponentially growing career paths in the world. The demand is not meeting supply, and will continue to grow in demand exponentially as years pass. Senior dev is averagig ~ 150k$ /yr and an average programmer is averaging 80k ~.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programmer/salary

he specifically wants to be a web developer. those numbers you posted are inflated with non-web developers. if you scroll down your link a little, you'll see a link specifically for web developers:

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/web-developer

75 percentile: 85k
50 percentile: 63k
25 percentile: 44k

i wouldn't describe a 63k median as "highly debatable" for being rich.

This post was edited by carteblanche on Sep 7 2015 11:47am