Refresher, learning after time away

[Patrick Brown]

I built my first site in 95. It was great, corporate client with vision and a willingness to be a guinea pig. Worked almost exclusively as a web developer until 06, 07. Went away to work in video production - I missed the outdoors and interacting with people.

Now I'm yearning to get back into web development at some level. Any ideas or suggestions for updating my skillset? Is php the html of old, meaning it is "the" language? Anyone else travel this path and have sage advice?

I am working on a new site in joomla. I'm just starting on it so I don't really know how I feel about using a cookie-cutter yet.

Thanks for any thoughts.

[Craig Severance]

Hello,
I think you could ask this question to 10 different developers that all specialize in different areas and they would all tell you that their way is the best. I would find a platform that you are most comfortable in and then start putting in the hours. There is no quick way and there will always be something new to learn so you will never run out of material to read. Our company focuses primarily on .Net, Silverlight and WCF platforms. A case can be made for any of the different solutions so it is up to you. Joomla seems to be the up and coming CMS solution with some nice bells and whistles. We are building our own to complete in the near future.

[Tim Piazza]

Patrick, if I'm hearing you right, you've only been away from web development for maybe 3 years? It shouldn't be that hard to get back into the game.

From my viewpoint, the minimum skill set today includes the ability to write PHP, edit and create CSS stylesheets, edit Javascript, set up a MySQL database, and have enough proficiency with a LAMP hosting environment that you know what to do when things stop working.

PHP does not replace HTML, it makes HTML come alive with data. There are programmers who would greatly prefer to work in other, newer languages, but I think it's much too soon to write off PHP. It's too ubiquitous.

You can create Joomla sites without knowing PHP. We've been able to knock out functional sites in just a few hours by finding a template that did what we wanted, customizing it, and dumping in content. However, that's something that we really only do when we want to get something up and running as a demo site. Real clients always have things that they want their site to do that isn't available in quite the way they want it. You need to be fluent with PHP to provide those pieces. if you learn to make Joomla components with PHP, you'll be much happier with the results of your efforts.

Tim

[Tim Piazza]

Listen to Evan. He's right on the money.

[Jeremy Houchens]

Patrick,

Try considering what you would like to do in the future.. meaning would you like to be in the MSFT world or the Open-source world? Personally I choose the Open Source deal. If you do choose Open Source... I would definitely learn how to administer a web server from the command line. SSH and an IP is all you need!

Ruby on Rails is out there also... the small start-up people seem to like it. Going forward... there is going to be a lot of Ruby on Rails apps that need updates.

No matter which language you choose... spend time on Object Oriented design.

Jer

[Patrick Brown]

An Update on my status. I have spent hours learning php/mysql, I am now working on my Drupal skills and am picking up html5. Thanks one and all for your suggestions, guidance and encouragement!