CIW? Retraining question

I've never heard of it - Certified Internet Webmaster? Sounds a bit like
bollocks to me.

I've been asked to give advice to somebody regarding retraining after
wasting their life doing an Art degree and now finding they can't get
any work. He's always been interested in web design and is looking for a
way to get onto the web programmer ladder. I know bugger all about web
design/programming and the skills required for it, he's looked at
Computeach and this is a 5 year course[1], at the end of which you get
the CIW wotsit. He's based in Lincoln which is hardly a hotbed for this
type of thing, but he's willing to move.

Is it any good? Along the way he'll be a qualified Zend php engineer
(never heard of that either). I know where I am with Checkpoint and
Cisco certs but not this, I know there's web skills on here - so can
anybody give him some advice?

My initial feeling is to avoid Computeach entirely and go for some
classroom based courses.


[1] Five grand! I could be CCIE on that!

 

I've been asked to give advice to somebody regarding retraining after

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.computeach.co.uk/core/

The above makes me assume you'd be correct in your assumption - if they
can't get this simple thing right what chance your mate?

 

I've worked in, and employed people in, the area of web design and web
application development for ~10 years, and I've never heard of it.

design and programming are different disciplines - very few people are
very good at both. To generalise, programming pays better, but design
payscales are more predictable.

[Zend php engineer] Bollocks. Without getting into a slanging match
about whether php is any good or not, there aren't many jobs for php
developers. Tell him to learn either Java or ASP.Net

[**** all]

Anything he starts learning now will be out of date in 5 years time.
Forget qualifications for this sort of thing. Tell him to just get in
at the bottom - if he's actually any good at the art side of things,
and can master something like Dreamweaver, and can knock up up a
professional looking site or three as references (top tip: offer local
businesses/shops to do a website for free, if they'll pay the domain
name registration/hosting, and allow your mate to quote the sites as
professional freelance designs).

I'd recommend trying for a low paid junior web designer role on ****
all money, then progressing upwards if he's any good, picking up
development skills to complement his design skills - after 5 years of
this, he'll be in a much better position than if he goes on a course
for 5 years and then tries to get a web developer position at the end.

 

5 YEARS?! You can get a degree in less time than that.

I'd say it's a complete waste of time. Doing some short intensive
courses in something like Dreamweaver or ASP.Net will probably get
him more joy. As Darsy said, people will be interested in what you can
show them, rather than the bit of paper (though the paper can help).

If it's arty stuff, course in Photoshop and Illustrator (or equivalent)
might not be bad.

If he's any good, he *may* find the freelance potential could actually
be better than getting a bottom feeder job.

To me, the Computeach 5 years thing will be a complete and utter waste
of time and money.

 

I don't disagree, but it's harder to get started. If I were looking to
employ a freelance/contract designer, I'd want to see lots of good
reference sites.

Mike's mate needs to go and learn all of this:

http://www.irt.org/

and also get some Dreamweaver and Photoshop skills (or Fireworks,
maybe, but I've never quite trusted that).

 

<snippage>

I was hoping you'd reply, and it confirmed my suspicions. I'll pass on
those comments - Thanks

 

He's completely wasting his time, and would be better to get something
mainstream and easily recognised... along with finding a basic junior
tech support job to broaden up general IT skills quickly.

If he's at all interested in contracting I'd suggest an MCSD, as there's
almost certainly going to be .net work out there for a while.

Alternatively, the Sun Jave SE and EE route would be recognisable, but
fewer people seem go the java route.

 

J2EE is fairly wrapped up (I mean as a career path, not the platform),
if you ask me - too many people with a lot of experience already on
the market.

There are some, if not quite cutting edge at least "new and
interesting" things that I would recommend anyone new to Web app
development to take a look at, AJAX[1] and "Ruby on Rails" to name but
two.

[1] whether it's any good or not isn't the main thing here, the fact
both Google and Amazon are into AJAX makes it worth at least knowing
/about/

 

Why do opensource types have to make products that sound so lame?

 

Indeed. PHP tends to be used for internal/freeware/Open Source stuff
whereas commercial places (ie the places that actually pay people to
write code) will almost always use Java or ASP.net

Phil

 

'Humour' and 'techie' very rarely mix.

Phil

 

they're fucking beardy geeks, who think it's "cool" to wear t-shirts
with pictures of the USS fucking Enterprise on them.

 

or penguins.

 

I'd second that being right in the middle of it. If any company wants
cheap J2EE now, they don't even hire juniors, they outsource it.

And the thing to bear in mind with AJAX is that's it's nothing that a
J2EE/XML/JavaScript[1] person doesn't know already.


[1] One of the most common skillsets around.

 

It's not a product and it's not even anything new. In fact it hinges
on one single code object in JavaScript.

 

I was on about ruby on rails.

 

Oh, I know - it's not a technology in itself, it's just a
package/mini-framework. I was just getting at the fact that it's a good
thing to have on your CV at the minute.

Apparently.

 

The name isn't nearly as bad as the language. The Rails part is
potentially nifty, but the Ruby part looks like the runner-up in an
Obfuscated Perl contest. It'd fit in well at the Turing Tarpit. I lost 3
months of my life to Ruby on fucking Rails, and I want my 3 months back.

 

It's for reasons like this I got into infrastructure rather than
codemonkeying.

 

Ah, well yeah, agreed totally.