Every couple of years I go back to my old school to participate in a careers convention, where people from a range of industries get together to dish out tips and advice to pupils trying to make career choices. A great cause, especially with uni now being a more challenging prospect here in the UK due to the huge hike in tuition fees. Youngsters really need all the help they can get to make sure they pick the path that’s right for them.
I promised those I spoke to this year that I would post a list of links on my blog as a follow-up to find out more about web development. I should stress that this list is by no means exhaustive; I put it together quite quickly and there’s plenty more I could have included. For example, whilst I’ve tried to include links relating to a range of technologies, inevitably there’s more about the areas I have more experience with. Hopefully though it can still provide plenty of reading material and food for thought to help in evaluating whether web development is a subject worth investigating further as a potential career or perhaps just as a hobby.
I’ll try to update the list from time to time when I think of more (suggestions also welcome via the comments). I’m also hoping to follow this blog post up with some further thoughts on choosing web development as a career.
Without further ado, here are the links:
Programming Languages / Frameworks
- HTML5/CSS/JavaScript – Open technologies at the heart of the web – learn these first!
- Node.js – Increasingly popular serverside JavaScript platform
- Ruby – Widely used
- Ruby on Rails – One of the most popular web frameworks, built on Ruby
- Python – A good starter language, often taught on uni courses etc.
- PHP – Been around a long time and still widely used, though not considered too cutting edge these days
- ASP.NET – Microsoft’s web platform, used a lot in the enterprise (see also http://asp.net/ and http://msdn.com/)
- Java – Mostly found in the enterprise, not a good choice if you want to keep ahead of the curve!
Online video/interactive training
- Treehouse – Web design & development
- Codecademy – JavaScript courses (other subjects on the way)
- CodeYear – Learn to program in a year (part of Codecademy)
- TekPub – Screencasts on a range of topics, some of which are free
- PluralSight – Large library of videos for a range of technologies (though with a bit of a Microsoft focus), not free but reasonably priced
- appendTo – jQuery/JavaScript training
- NodeTuts – Node.js screencasts
- RailsCasts – Ruby on Rails screencasts
(e)Books
Look out for deals of the day from most of these – they tend to have an ebook or two available each day for around £7-£10 (see my Twitter list covering many of the ebook publishers).
- O’Reilly – My favourite, some great JavaScript books such as Douglas Crockford’s “Javascript: The Good Parts“
- Manning Publications
- The Pragmatic Bookshelf
- Apress
- InformIT
Resources
- Move the Web Forward – One stop shop for keeping abreast of web standards and getting involved in the community
- jQuery – Most popular JavaScript framework for rapid web development
- Twitter Bootstrap – UI framework that makes it really easy to get a good UI up and running very quickly
- Google Reader – RSS aggregator – subscribe to blogs and news sites and have all articles brought together in one place to save having to check each site manually
- TweetDeck – Useful Twitter client for monitoring topics and lists of accounts to help breakdown the wealth of information that flows through Twitter
Databases
- MySQL – Most popular open source relational database server (free)
- PostgreSQL – Another popular open source relational database
- SQL Server – Microsoft’s SQL database, common in the enterprise (free cutdown editions available – Express and Compact Edition)
- MongoDB – Popular open source “NoSQL” database (free) – an alternative approach to “traditional” databases (has pros and cons)
- CouchDB – Another popular NoSQL database
News
- Hacker News – Anything and everything of interest to a techie
- Reddit Programming – As above – see http://reddit.com/r/LearnProgramming/ and other related sections also
- DailyJS – JavaScript/Node.js news
- Ruby Inside – Ruby news and tutorials
- Techmeme – General tech news, usually one of the first places you’ll find the big stories
- Twitter – One of the best ways of keeping on top of everything – many blogs tend to post on their Twitter feeds when new articles are posted, plus there’s an endless stream of useful links being shared
Help
- StackOverflow – Q&A site for developers with specific problems, usually related to specific source code
- Programmers – Q&A site for programmers with higher-level conceptual problems
Mailing Lists
Podcasts
- Herding Code – Weekly podcast on a range of topics
- Boagworld – Longest running web design podcast
- The Changelog – Weekly podcast on the world of Open Source
- .NET Rocks! – .NET
- Hanselminutes – .NET/Windows focus
- NodeUp – Node.js
- 5by5 – A number of podcasts on a range of topics
Web Hosts
- Heroku – For Ruby, Node.js, Python, Java and more (requires understanding of source control – see below)
- AppHarbor – For .NET (requires understanding of source control – see below)
- WebHostingTalk – Great forums to help find/discuss any type of web host
Jobs
Source Code / Version Control
4 Comments
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This seems really a wonderful article . One can get to know everything about the web development. No doubt this will help a lot to all, including newbies and experts as well. Thanks!
Hey, It is really an informative post. You had shared all the points that are to be looked upon by web developer. Thanks for it.
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