Hello there!

 

My name is Sam and I am looking to start a career in web design soon. I have been practicing in my spare time for a while now and feel pretty confident using HTML and CSS. My Javascript knowledge is also reasonably good and I've experimented with PHP. Got a basic understanding of a few other things like Ruby too.

 

I'm currently using Treehouse, which I have found very helpful. I've also subscribed to Web Designer magazine and a few podcasts in an attempt to immerse myself in web design as much as possible.

 

I would be curious to hear how other people learn. Also, how much knowledge should you have before you start putting your name out there and looking for work? Is it more advisable to learn a bit of everything or just concentrate on specialising in a few specific areas? Which skills are the most important?

 

Any feedback would be appreciated. Look forward to chatting with you guys!

 

 

Welcome to WDF! Nice to have you here

 

Check this post - http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/topic/82799-learning/

Maybe you'll find it useful.

 

Good luck

Welcome Sam, It seems that you are on the right path, TreeHouse is a very good resource. I recommend https://www.codeschool.com/ too. They are what I used to my study materials leading to my first job with an agency and they cover JavaScript in far more depth than Treehouse, which is sadly lacking in that language. It took me about 8 months to land this job starting from scratch but I did study about 50-60 hrs per week during that period. It's hard to put a time scale on it, but you should start building a portfolio, start putting code samples up onto Github. What got me my job was that I took code samples to the interview and offered to code right in front of them to prove I knew how to code, at least to a junior standard. Showing you willingness to learn will greatly help you too.

You eventually want to make a decision if you wanna focus more on the front-end or the backend. if you head down the Front-end route I highly recommend the resource https://frontendmasters.com/ this is the sort of material that will take you from a junior developer to a Senior, they cover a lot of the more complex aspects of Javascript and general Front-end development in great depth. They also cover Node.Js which is becoming very popular on the server side.

 

The resources I listed are paid, but as you have probably already noticed with Treehouse, the quality is far better than the free ones. You get what you pay for, and it's a million percent worth it to get your foot in the door in one of the most exciting and rewarding career paths there is.

Edited May 18, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith