The competition for web developers is unbelievably fierce.
I've been doing it professionally for around 7 years but over 10 on my own as you have, I also started coding websites for fun before I went to college and got the official degree behind me. All that did really was let me barter for more money. There are people in India that will do website work for about $2USD an hour.

The web changes a lot. I have over 20 languages on my resume and only about 4 of them came from college, the rest I had to learn on my own. You simply can't stop reading in this field and noone pays you to read but they will expect you to know things before them. You also have to be ready to jump into specifications which can be technical but to do it well you have to dig deep. You have to keep up on security and exploits too. You have the added annoyance of browsers changing all the time. Add in mobile devices and you can build a site once then have to tweak it over 5 times or more to get it working in all browsers. SEO is what people will pay the most for but they are not going to help you maintain it. Clients don't want to create content but they want to be number 1 in searches. They don't want to update their graphics over time but they want to be number 1 and most appealing with their ancient site. The worst part is that the majority of them are cheap, cheap, cheap. They get so many things free online that they don't appreciate any of the knowledge it takes to make great websites. They will settle for frameworks and templates just to "get something up" then complain about it without seeking professional help.

Small businesses especially have extremely unrealistic ideas about a website, they will expect to hand you a 3 page pdf document and for you to make their site magnificent at the end of 3 days. They can't tell you why their company is better than any of the others and they can't sell you on who they are. They don't want to talk about the inner workings of their business for fear that someone will point out that they are doing it wrong. It will be up to you to be their marketing guru, graphic designer, and web developer all in one. In return they will buck at you and tell you that everything costs too much money.

When something is wrong on the website - the users never give you any details. It's broken is all they can tell you. You have to beg and goad the real information from them. What page were you on when it happened? What browser were you using? You will have to explain to many of them how to copy and paste or send a picture to you as a screenshot. Many of them are blathering idiots on their computers and aren't used to debugging anything so they don't talk technical - they say - It's broken, fix it. They won't read any instructions you give them on how to use their website, they will type their username or password wrong and still tell you that the site does not work, it's broken and it's your fault. It will take you over 30 minutes per email to aid these people because you have to screenshot every step for them and every click just to explain basic things. As long as 2 weeks will pass and they will again have the same problem and not refer to the original documentation but ask you again to explain it all. They want their hand held through the entire process, they are not peers, they don't know your world and don't care to understand it, they will only tell you, it's broken and blame it on you each time.


Good luck to you if you choose this line of work. The browser compatibilities make it challenging and the clients make it worse. How do you explain to them what has taken you years to learn in the 15 minute conversations they can put aside to talk about their website. It is indeed a challenge. The best sites to work on are the constant ones where a larger company is using their website for forms and sales or information presentation. Those are the clients that understand there will be cost involved and aren't penny pinching. They also will act as a good client and define their needs clearly instead of just complaining about everything you present them. Then there are the web designers and flash junkies that try to make template websites cheaper than you and quicker with little SEO planning. They are the ambulance chasers of the field, they can't exist without Dreamweaver and believe that the way to design is all images, nothing generated or creative in CSS. They will disgust you in time.

All this being said, I love my work, it's the people that sometimes ruin it, like most jobs.

Hahaha, oh god THIS. So many times I've heard "xyz is broken" without any idea what "broken" means. And half the time they never reply to your email asking for clarification/details so you have to end up chasing them on their phones (not that they pick up or return calls any more frequently)

Client: The registration page is completely broken!
Me: Um, it looks good to me. Can you check again
Client: No! It's still broken, please do something about it.
Me: Can you tell me exactly what is broken? It still works for me.
Client: The headline has the wrong font and the margins between the form elements are totally off!
Me: -.-*

I do not agree with that story you linked to.

Did you even read it? The rest of your post suggest you didn't.

The guy who wrote it is a huge C fan ( it shows badly ) - his only complaint is the language syntax.[/quote]

Did you miss where he complained about lack of useful debugging info, the problems with php.ini, the way PHP continues to run when it should halt due to errors, or.. actually the 95% if the article that was complaining about things other than syntax.

There were negative points in the article about C as well, and about other languages. There weren't many of course as it wasn't an article about the shortcomings of C or other languages, it was an article about the shortcomings of PHP.

Second off, there is nothing that can replace the usefulness of PhP for web site design, unless you like coding action script. ( HTML 5 is not up for debate, since there is no standards set, and most web browsers do NOT fully support it yet ) .[/quote]

ASP, and more recently ASP.NET have always been quick any easy to use for me, as well as powerful.

Third - a lot of languages have dead communities - why is is necessary to have an active community to be able to code?[/quote]

Where did that come from?

Forth - the language syntax is a lot like Python, however PhP is better adapted for web applications. The guy in the story hates interpreted languages because they do not have the same syntax as C.[/quote]

Please point out how you came to that conclusion.

Fifth - I would love to see his explanation of why he wants everyone to code webpages in C .[/quote]

I would love to see your explanation of how you came to that conclusion as well.

From everything you've posted, it looks like you spent around 30 seconds scanning through the article and made a conclusion based on 1% of the content.

I've "only" been creating my own web sites since 1995. Calling me inexperienced due to my choice in languages, is a bit childish, don't you think ?

I believe he's calling you inexperienced due to the way in which you completely failed to comprehend the article, as is evidenced by the post you wrote about it. That and the fact that you seem to think that PHP, ActionScript and HTML5 are the only web development options. There are several others (some of which are even mentioned by name in the article), so your apparent lack of knowledge of them can only be construed as inexperience.

And for the record, statements of a "I've been doing this since <insert date here>" format are meaningless. The fact that a person has been doing something for a long time in no way means they are any good at it. I think the first time I coded a web page was around 1992, and I consider myself to be a complete novice.

[quote name='tstrimple' timestamp='1355089563' post='5008889']
Based on this post it's clear you have no idea what you're talking about regarding web development and you should not be recommending things to other inexperienced web developers.

I've "only" been creating my own web sites since 1995. Calling me inexperienced due to my choice in languages, is a bit childish, don't you think ?
[/quote]

I was prepared to tear your original post apart line by line, but Lenny took care of that in a much more friendly way than I probably would have. There is one line I will call out that really highlights your ignorance regarding web development however.

Second off, there is nothing that can replace the usefulness of PhP for web site design, unless you like coding action script. ( HTML 5 is not up for debate, since there is no standards set, and most web browsers do NOT fully support it yet ) .

"PhP" is not a tool for web site design and it's equivalent is not action script or HTML5. You're comparing web server technologies with client side technologies which is entirely wrong. How you've managed to create your own website since 1995 and not understand the difference between server side and client side technologies is beyond me. You're also wrong on the HTML5 front. Many modern website developers are using it quite successfully for enhancing website experiences for users on the latest browsers, while also providing a graceful failure for browsers that do not support it.

... ( HTML 5 is not up for debate, since there is no standards set, and most web browsers do NOT fully support it yet ) . ...

Then why does it seem I see more and more professionals using HTML 5 then and like someone stated above me, providing a graceful failure for browsers that do not support it?

but Lenny took care of that in a much more friendly way than I probably would have

And I was worried that I came across far more harshly than I intended.