GetDotted Domains

Viewing Thread:
"The risks of a career in Web Design"

The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.

Wed 26/09/01 at 12:56
Regular
Posts: 787
The internet is booming. In the last year the number of company sites on the internet has grown by a third. It is now physically impossible to view every page on the net, as they are being made faster than we can see them. Companies are getting on the net and doing more trade than ever. The internet is growing fast.

So who is making all these sites? Go to Google.com and type in Web Design Companies. It found 1,700,000 related links, and theres probably more by the time you read this. If each of these pages is a web design company, there is more companies than there are people in London and New York combined!

On top of that, who here knows a little about coding? You can bet that most people here can make a "This is me and this is my dog" page and nearly all of us have a Geocities site. There must be literally millions of people who are able to create websites in the world. Tomorrows World did a special on the internet, and on their website they ran a special teaching people how to code!

The reason for this is that it is really easy to make a page. Not like Turbo and his PHP, but a straight advertisement page can be knocked up by a complete novice in days. I had a work experience guy not too long ago at my work, and I taught him how to code HTML in a week, in which, he created another 2 sites on the net.

Why am I going on about this? Well, because there are so many people allready able to code a page, and the fact that to learn it is a matter of a few days reading up on the net, should us professional web designers fear for our jobs? The industry is growing, and the number of sites that need to be made is growing, but with the likes of Dreamweaver and (the awful) Frontpage, some are doing it themselves, some are learning to code, and some are even giving it to their sons!

Thats another issue. Our generation of natural PC users and games players are fully computer literate. It's the world we and future generations have been brought up in. There are many companies where the MDs are a bit scared about "this new fangled internet thing" and give it to their kids who know more about "that kind of thing". Give it 5-10 years, and it'll be us running those companies, perfectly able to code our own sites.

So, with everyone writing their own sites and there being more web designers than ever, is there going to be enough work for us all?

Currently, the people wanting sites have no interest in learning code, they have too much to do with the running of their companies, and expect that actual companies that specialise in web design will do a better job. Even that is a risky business though. Look around the net and there are some really pro sites made by kids in their bedrooms. How is the big cheeses to know?

The future? The pro companies will start to struggle as less and less supercompanies need sites. The smaller companies will jostle for work in competition from the bedroom whizzkids, and companies will have ex-bedroom whizzkids working there, so less and less companies require sites.

We, as Web designers must remember that our jobs are under threat. We have to keep up with the latest technologies. We have to use the position that we are in to make sure that we are one better than the people who work at the companies we are fighting for, so they can feel better about spending the money with us rather than doing it themselves. We personally have to have CVs as long as our arms with skills, sites we have done and training courses so we have something over our younger competitors.

It's a tougher industry than the simplicity of the coding suggests, very volitile and instable especially in these times of infancy.

Be alert. Your country needs lerts.
Sun 30/09/01 at 16:48
Regular
Posts: 2,982
Turbonutter wrote:
> Dav1d wrote:
> No Hidden Costs with PHP

Shouldn't that be: "No costs at all with PHP"

---

No.... What I said is what I meant....

:-)
Sun 30/09/01 at 16:46
Regular
"Eff, you see, kay?"
Posts: 14,156
Dav1d wrote:
> No Hidden Costs with PHP

Shouldn't that be: "No costs at all with PHP"
Sun 30/09/01 at 14:41
Regular
Posts: 2,982
6 Reasons Why PHP is Better than ASP (There may be more.....)

- Speed

- Superior Memory Management

- No Hidden Costs with PHP

- MySQL, PHP's integration with MySQL is simply fantastic.

- Closer to Java/C++ Style of Programming

- Cross Platform Migration Strategy. Microsoft is constantly tuning ASP.
Sat 29/09/01 at 17:50
Regular
"Eff, you see, kay?"
Posts: 14,156
How's that then?
Sat 29/09/01 at 17:19
Regular
""
Posts: 303
well thats a matter of opinion.
Sat 29/09/01 at 16:53
Regular
"Eff, you see, kay?"
Posts: 14,156
Aye, but PHP can do everything ASP can do, better and much faster.
Sat 29/09/01 at 15:11
Regular
""
Posts: 303
Why does everyone knock ASP? Just coz it's M$? I'm interested in your reasoning.

Depends on what you're using for, surely. I work for a large consultancy and I'd say 90% of our projects use an ASP frontend, java midtier, oracle backend.

We're talking major projects here - The one I'm working with right now is the newest and bestest internet bank. The architecture is amazing!!
Sat 29/09/01 at 00:46
Regular
"It goes so quickly"
Posts: 4,083
.. of course Bob, that would be easier said than done if mySQL was enabled for us lot... don't you think??? *cough cough* :o). Is that still gonna happen??? Part of your big project maybe??.
Sat 29/09/01 at 00:37
Regular
"Eff, you see, kay?"
Posts: 14,156
What language to use depends on what you want to do.

For advanced to complex tasks, PHP and MySQL are very adequet.

For extremely powerful webb-apps, use Perl.

For stupidly powerful apps, use C++

However, if you want to be laughed out of the coders fraternity wearing frilly knickers and carrying the Stone of Shame, ASP will do you nicely.
Sat 29/09/01 at 00:24
Regular
Posts: 612
Just do what we do. Program in PHP and MySQl. Its the best. Forget DW it is complete pants. I am a pro because I can work from BB edit (notpad for windows users). Real programers are flexabe and can program in multiple (usefull (ie not pascal)) languages.

Freeola & GetDotted are rated 5 Stars

Check out some of our customer reviews below:

Very pleased
Very pleased with the help given by your staff. They explained technical details in an easy way and were patient when providing information to a non expert like me.
Simple, yet effective...
This is perfect, so simple yet effective, couldnt believe that I could build a web site, have alrealdy recommended you to friends. Brilliant.
Con

View More Reviews

Need some help? Give us a call on 01376 55 60 60

Go to Support Centre

It appears you are using an old browser, as such, some parts of the Freeola and Getdotted site will not work as intended. Using the latest version of your browser, or another browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera will provide a better, safer browsing experience for you.