Starting a Web Developer at 55 years old possible?

Question

I was working as a data entry guy for 6 years. I am thinking starting a web development career . I was thiking starting with asp.net or php. I only have some XP knowledge and some light html basics. I have no idea from where I should start? A few friends closer to my age who got laid off are using the VS 2005 studio 2005. Wonder what is the best bet for me? I have no programming experience. Only data entry. Thanks

Answer 1

You will take the advice of all the above as to "what is right". I'm just here to tell you, as a fellow 55-year-older: do it! I have. You can! I did mainframes. I switched to xhtml/ javascript/ css/ php/ asp/ vb/ and so on... I'm doin' fine. So can you. Again: do it! Good luck!

Answer 2

I think you're on the right track--asp vs. php. acb29 gave you a great overview of everything, but I think you are going to be on your own for a least a while, and asp and php are your best solutions. Lots of hosting providers support these.

What I'm getting at is that it is unlikely that some company is going to hire you off the street and put you in a Java environment, or any of the others acb29 mentioned. You'll proably have to start independently and target small companies that don't maintain their own servers and will want outsourced hosting. Most of those other options just don't work that well in a shared-server environment.

asp is not especially good in that environment either, but it is widely available, and I include it with php for you because it is so easy for you to get up and running and doing some impressive things.

Download Visual Studio 2005 Web Developer Express Edition and see for yourself. They have tons of free videos to learn from, and they have free pdf books you can download after registering the software.

Or, get yourself a copy of Apache, PHP, and MySQL (all for free) and get into it. It's going to take a lot longer to get up to speed or to do anything interesting...much more learning involved, but you might be better prepared for the future.

ps. Don't bother with Javascript and AJAX for a while. You probably will do some Javascript eventually, but contrary to what has been said by others, it is not at all clear that AJAX has any real legs. I may be wrong, but it just seems like a hack to get us from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0. I'd make sure it earns a long-term place before investing in learning much about it.

Answer 3

You'll need at least a certificate or AA degree. But Web development is way beyond just HTML. You need to know at least a little bit about Flash, you will probably want to learn JavaScript and ActionScript, you definitely need to know CSS and understand a little about PHP. It's really useful to be familiar with Dreamweaver, but not just using the design part of it, you should also know the code (some of which you have some understanding, it's html and so on). Remember it's going to be fiercely competitive out there. But DO NOT worry about your age, I would make sure to tell employers ANYTHING in your years of experience that will show how you can bring all this knowledge together for their benefit. Good luck! Go for it!

Answer 4

I would say since you're just getting started, work your way backwards. By that I mean find out what the companies in your area that are hiring are using. A quick look for local IT jobs on one of the online job boards will be a good start. After all, what good is it mastering a particular web technology if you can't land a job doing it?

And don't be afraid to go up to someone that is in the biz locally and talk to them. Programmers/developers are easy to spot. They are always trying to upgrade their skills so you can always find one at the local bookstore in the computer books isle. Most of them love talking IT so you'll have no problem picking their brain.

As you can tell from reading all these answers there are a lot of different directions you can choose when it comes to web development. What you don't want to do is try to learn them all right off the bat. Choose one and go with it. Learn everything you can about it.

I would start off with very simple (and short) beginners books on the following subjects:

1. HTML
2. CSS
3. Object Oriented Programming
4. Relational Databases

Just remember...short and simple books that provide an overview of these subjects. Once you're done getting your feet wet with these books and have gathered a feel for the local IT job market you'll be ready to dive into one of the more specialized technologies already mentioned here.

Also, don't worry about the fact that you're 55. If you would have told me 25 years ago that a 55 year old person was trying to begin a new career in the IT field, I would have said "forget it". But in this day and age with all the information we have readily available at our fingertips
I say "no problem".

Answer 5

Ever seen that cartoon? A dog's sat using a computer. He says to another dog "on the Internet no-one knows you're a dog". Same thing with age, it doesn't matter, all that matters is your ability to code.

It's a big step up from data entry to PHP coding so start with html and css and then progress.

Take a look at freelancers.net where you'll see lots of PHP and ASP projects up for grabs. There's work out there once you've got the skills.

Answer 6

Web development your talking about programming? Design and programming are two very different things but need to be brought together in web development. I will focus on development below. In web development today , software development breaks down across corporate and technology lines.


ASP.NET/ Windows/ SqlSever: If you intend to work in a Windows shop ( a company that supports VB or Sql Server) then you need to cut your teeth learning the Microsoft .NET platform. Basically, .NET (ASp.NET , VB.NET , C#) is a technology framework Microsoft uses across all its technology products . Its fully integrated into modern Windows products and is the best way to created Windows based web applications.

JAVA/ JSP: If you intend to work for large financial or pharmaceutical or other large corporate encironmments, you will need to brush up on Java and JSP and J2EE these are corporate middle-ware technologies and are often tied to web front ends. You will only find this in large corporate environments because of the language and system complexities. There are many opportunities for Java but you need to develop a rich understanding of these complex systems.

COLDFUSION/CFM : Coldfusion is one of the original web development languages and is still used today, its a bit of a niche player (usually only sites that started in CFM are still running or built on CFM), Coldfusion brings a simplified tag markup language with very powerful server functionality that can scale very well to large sites.

PHP/PERL/MYSQL OPEN SOURCE: Know and the LAMP stack , this is the most popular open source (ie. non-commercial) technology, it is probably the most widely deployed, it offers the most flexibility (can run on multiple platforms) , minimal infrastructure costs (can run on low end servers) and is popular for a wide variety of sites.

RUBY/PYTHON: These are newer but less used web development languages, popular particular in academic circles..

Hope that shed some light. You need try and find a balance between career opportunities and what you enjoy. Technology will change so its not just about learning a language these days, its about understanding the bigger picture. Good luck!

Answer 7

Anything is possible. age matters not.
It all depends on you ability\willingness to comprehend programming languages. (thinking logically, mathematically) Of course an interest in anything helps to propel your learning curve and progress towards mastering the tasks at hand.

Microsoft Visual Studio is a great placed to start, but I'd definitely do some research on your own.

AJAX is a big factor on the development of where the web is going.

some examples are:
www.netvibes.com
www.igoogle.com
www.pageflakes.com
www.yourminis.com

these are all AJAX based pages that are modular applets, or widgets that you can drop in to your pages.

Answer 8

Learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS first. Then start off learning JavaScript or a client side language. After that move into server side languages such as ASP, PHP, etc.