Career opportunities!!!!

[fasterslacker]

Hi, I was just wondering what some of you think the career outlook is for someone that is an expert at flash and html, and is learning dhtml, php, asp, and perl?

Good, Bad? what do you think?

I would like to get some feedback, so any response would be appreciated.

[TheOriginalFlashDavo]

Originally posted by fasterslacker
Hi, I was just wondering what some of you think the career outlook is for someone that is an expert at flash and html, and is learning dhtml, php, asp, and perl?

Well first of all decide what you want to specialise in. The unemployment offices are full of "jack-of-all-trades" that know a little dhtml, a little php, a little asp, and a little perl. There is no way you can become a high level developer in ALL the major languages, so choose the one that interest you and/or has the greatest future potential and specialise.

Then your career outlook is as bright as you are

[fasterslacker]

yes, that's true, but you need to know many of those things in order to have a great interactive and user oriented web site.

[TheOriginalFlashDavo]

Well, no. A website wil use either PHP or ASP, not both. And if you're using PHP and ASP you won't usually be using Perl as well.
(have I got that right exactly? The point is that a site of any decent size is built on one platform/language, not a multitude of them. Now, someone may come in and give me an example of some kind of application that is built using a number of languages, but in general no)

And what's your classification for an "expert" in Flash and HTML? For one thing, there is no such thing as "HTML" anymore, so first you should start looking at the XML based codes you actually need to know before referring to yourself that way.

Not dumping on you, but it's a very non-descript question you're asking, and I know of many fantatically interactive and user orientated websites that are built just using ASP and DHTML - no Perl, no PHP...

As I said previously, specialisation in a language/area will be the best road to a successful career. The javk-of-all-trades era is effectively over.

[gecko2]

When I first started out I had virtually no programming experience, went through art college the usual root and got offered a job, didn't apply, I was lucky. Learnt basic HTML through using Dreamweaver, then learnt flash and some actionscript, already knew Photoshop. But ok, it may look nice but does it work correctly? So I've been learning heavy actionscript, ASP and XML, so I've chosen these two to fully research and understand before even thinking about anything else.

Back to the books anyway

[tone001]

In larger web based projects you will often have a team of specialists. It helps if the specialist knows a litle about the other roles, but not necessary.

In a typical project you might have these roles:

Interface designer (Flash)
Designer/Animator (Flash)
Flash/Server connection (Flash/CGI/XML)
Backend scripting (PHP/ASP/PERL/Java)
Database admin (??)

...and possibly more

You will probably get more money if you specialise rather than trying to do everything yourself.

Personally I specilise in interface design and application design, and although i can do the rest, I prefer to work with experts!

[fasterslacker]

so how would you apply ASP and XML into a web-site? how are they used? and what for?

[tone001]

Well I don't know much ASP, but basically the XML would be used for a Flash based web site to transfer data back and forth to the server. The ASP (or PHP/Perl etc) would then process the XML and store the data in a database.

Thats it in very simplistic terms .... but the sky is really the limit to what you can do.

[hurricaneone]

One word - imagination.

If you have it, and you combine it with all that has gone before in this thread (from asp to xml and all in between), then I predict that you will have a successful career/business on your hands.

If, on the other hand, your imagination has been stunted by one of the wide range of potential 'imagination stunters' available to the modern homo sapien, then forget it and move on to something else.

(Hmmm, actually, there is hope for those who have lost their imagination, but the time and patience needed to recover this most valuable of properties is not possessed by most individuals).