Web Developer Associate Degree program at my community college. Worth it?

I hope someone can help with input. I am floundering here.

I'm a 36 year old mom of three who has been doing clerical work all my life. Spent my time home with my kids and never finished college. So, here I am, tired of surviving, trying to figure out what to do.

I have thought about going back to school and becoming a teacher. I would like to explore other options that would require less schooling and more pay.

I want to know what kind of person is best suited for this career, and what kind of academic strengths you need. My strengths are in "words"... I write well, notice details, am a stickler for correctness. I've always been good with words, ideas, details, and design. I have a strong creative side and I'm really very smart but I STINK at math.

I taught myself basic HTML in the early 90's, just for fun. I read all I could and learned quickly. I have no idea if this means I'd be naturally good at anything beyond that though.

The community college offers a 2 year program for "Web Developer" and a shorter one for Web Design. What kinds of things would you tell someone considering this option?

I have struggled to find a Health Care path that would suit me because the pay is great and the demand is great but aside from maybe being an Ultrasound tech, it's just not "me". I like to work with computers, I like to work alone if possible. I'm not a morning person and I am no good at math. What would you tell me?

Hi Chris,

I'm currently pursuing a 2 year program for web development here in DC. It's a second career for me as I was previously a medical student. I went to a career counselor when I was first contemplating leaving medical school (and going the web dev path) and she told me that a web career may not be an ideal career for myself personally BUT the advice she offered me was to try a class first, see if I like it, and go from there...so maybe you could do the same (I have since stuck it out).
A fun little test you might want to take is the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) and see if you have the MBTI "type" of other web developers (again don't be discouraged as I believe I actually don't have the "ideal" type as most web developers).
So anyway my best piece of advice would be to take a class or two and see if you like it...if you do great! but if not then at least you know.

Hope this helps

Brian

I've worked in all kinds of web jobs over the last ten years from design to heavy server-side coding. I worked the dot.com boom in the late 90's in Silicon Valley (interesting time), and little shops in small towns.

Generally speaking, when an employer says "Web Design" they're referring to the visual layout of the page, the navigation site structure, so forth and so on. If they're saying "Web Developer" they mean the actual programming (ASP, .NET, .JSP, whathaveyou) that goes on behind the scenes.

The latter pays better. It's also less "painting a picture" than "doing a crossword puzzle" if that helps you place the thinking pattern. More importantly, it's EASY to put your head down to do your work for a couple years, look up and realize that your skillset is completely out of date. It's not quite back to square one, but you really have to keep on top of things to stay competitive.

So far as math skills - for the design side, don't worry about it. The most you'll confront is "how many pixels do I have left to work with if I do such and such?"

For the developer side - it's not so much that you need to know math, so much as you need to learn to think logically. You know those word problems in high school? It's kind of like that. There's no equations to solve, but you need to know how to lay out what you want to have happen in a logical pattern. For example -

1. Person A just placed item X in their shopping cart
2. Look what that item is
3. Search all recent sales records where that item was sold, that contain at least one other item.
4. Of those "other items", which are most common in your recordset?
5. Get the product information for the five most common "other items"
6. Display the product information for those other five products as a "other customers liked..." sidebar.

That kind of thing. Once you can think like the programming language thinks, adapting to the vagaries of syntax is comparatively easy.

chris in San Antonio, Texas said: I hope someone can help with input. I am floundering here.

I'm a 36 year old mom of three who has been doing clerical work all my life. Spent my time home with my kids and never finished college. So, here I am, tired of surviving, trying to figure out what to do.

I have thought about going back to school and becoming a teacher. I would like to explore other options that would require less schooling and more pay.

I want to know what kind of person is best suited for this career, and what kind of academic strengths you need. My strengths are in "words"... I write well, notice details, am a stickler for correctness. I've always been good with words, ideas, details, and design. I have a strong creative side and I'm really very smart but I STINK at math.

I taught myself basic HTML in the early 90's, just for fun. I read all I could and learned quickly. I have no idea if this means I'd be naturally good at anything beyond that though.

The community college offers a 2 year program for "Web Developer" and a shorter one for Web Design. What kinds of things would you tell someone considering this option?

I have struggled to find a Health Care path that would suit me because the pay is great and the demand is great but aside from maybe being an Ultrasound tech, it's just not "me". I like to work with computers, I like to work alone if possible. I'm not a morning person and I am no good at math. What would you tell me?

~~ Absolutely amazing! You sound EXACTLY like me. I just turned 37 with 2 kids and have been in clerical most of my life. I then obtained my MCSE Cert. and worked in the Electronic Data Interchange field with software programmers while only interacting with the IT guys on occasion. I 'loved' this job, more of preventing any problems before occuring. Then did technical support, answering phones and resolving issues, paid $60K per year but didn't like it. It's challenging. Now looking at WEB

Good stuff. I'm doing a very condensed full scope Webmaster class- and only after thorough consideration of MSCE first. I think - actually I know because I did this for a job, that to make it in the relatively oversaturated field of web design (not developing), you need to be a salesperson first. Most designers can't sell, even if they can do pretty good work. just a thought..

Mike in Delray Beach, Florida said: Good stuff. I'm doing a very condensed full scope Webmaster class- and only after thorough consideration of MSCE first. I think - actually I know because I did this for a job, that to make it in the relatively oversaturated field of web design (not developing), you need to be a salesperson first. Most designers can't sell, even if they can do pretty good work. just a thought..

Hi Mike, good comment ... I've pretty much made up my mind to go into Web Development as I don't care for the hands on with hardware or the constant troubleshooting of the actual Computer Science/IT Tech field, and because I'm only 'semi' creative, I don't feel that a design focus would be my thing. I'm somewhere in between. I'm technically savvy, yet prefer 'creating' and preventing and software rather then the actual 'hands on' hardware troubleshooting all the time. I'm a thinker, not a hands on doer per say.

So, I plan to start with Web Development, and possibly also further my skills later on to include Computer/Internet Security which is an even more in demand field to be in.