Question: Graduate Developer Hons Degree

neonitrix · 18-04-2014 5:19pm #1

Hi Guys,

I would consider myself a strong-ish developer with a solid grounding in Java / Ruby plus a few others, getting good grades in the core languages, where I fall down is User Interface or Web Interface type stuff. I am not a designer and anything I touch ends up looking like a kid that has eaten too much skittles and drank too much coke put it together.

I have very little in languages that interact with web stuff, so my html css and javascript skills are not upto much by my own admission, have not touched on any of the 3 in college in any major way tbh.

As a developer do I stand a chance of avoiding the front end stuff, is there such a thing as a developer that only writes back end code, non user interface coding.

neo

ChRoMe · 18-04-2014 5:42pm

neonitrix wrote: »

Hi Guys,

I would consider myself a strong-ish developer with a solid grounding in Java / Ruby plus a few others, getting good grades in the core languages, where I fall down is User Interface or Web Interface type stuff. I am not a designer and anything I touch ends up looking like a kid that has eaten too much skittles and drank too much coke put it together.

I have very little in languages that interact with web stuff, so my html css and javascript skills are not upto much by my own admission, have not touched on any of the 3 in college in any major way tbh.

As a developer do I stand a chance of avoiding the front end stuff, is there such a thing as a developer that only writes back end code, non user interface coding.

neo

You dont need to be great at it, but you have to have a bit of javascript (which basically means jQuery) and fundamental css.

neonitrix · 18-04-2014 5:52pm

ChRoMe wrote: »

You dont need to be great at it, but you have to have a bit of javascript (which basically means jQuery) and fundamental css.

I have familiarity with both and my final year project is forcing me to up-skill from having nothing in either, also going to use the summer to try and level the field with both.

tks

neonitrix

c_man · 18-04-2014 6:39pm

neonitrix wrote: »

As a developer do I stand a chance of avoiding the front end stuff, is there such a thing as a developer that only writes back end code, non user interface coding.

Of course! It's nice having a library contained like that. Make some changes, run your unit/integration tests and bang! immediate feedback. No bs UE bugs, no humming and hawwing from the UE team after you've delivered the specs they asked for, no QA finding that there's a weird shading effect in play on XP machines...

I have worked on libraries and client side code (currently back at that), both fields have their pros. No need to set any limits on yourself just yet.

neonitrix · 18-04-2014 6:42pm

c_man wrote: »

Of course! It's nice having a library contained like that. Make some changes, run your unit/integration tests and bang! immediate feedback. No bs UE bugs, no humming and hawwing from the UE team after you've delivered the specs they asked for, no QA finding that there's a weird shading effect in play on XP machines...

I have worked on libraries and client side code (currently back at that), both fields have their pros. No need to set any limits on yourself just yet.

Thanks it's nice to see it in context

Neo

John_Mc · 19-04-2014 12:12pm

I wouldn't worry about your design skills. In reality it's a completely different skill and a role that is filled by a dedicated graphic designer. As a developer, you'll need to be able to implement the design using Html & CSS, or whatever presentation framework is used in the application.

UI design is a bit different in that it relates to the placement & labelling of controls to provide a consistent and intuitive interface. If you're building a web application then I'd suggest using Twitter Bootstrap as it gives you a menu of nicely styled controls to choose from. You can easily build a web application that looks good without much effort.

As to your question, yes you can easily find roles which don't require UI work. You could be working on SOA web services, test automation, or could simply be using frameworks that automatically generate the UI for you.

Personally I'd find this a bit boring as all you're doing is writing code. Doing the UI stuff adds some variety and this is definitely a good thing.

neonitrix · 19-04-2014 12:39pm

Thanks for the replies guys, I suppose I am just concerned with being expected as a developer to make something that looks good, which will never happen, but I can make stuff functional, I am going to use the time between finishing college and gaining employment (hopefully not too long) to upskill in the jquery / css area, html will hopefully fall in line from tinkering.

thanks again

neo

Ballyv24 · 19-04-2014 1:09pm

neonitrix wrote: »

Thanks for the replies guys, I suppose I am just concerned with being expected as a developer to make something that looks good, which will never happen, but I can make stuff functional, I am going to use the time between finishing college and gaining employment (hopefully not too long) to upskill in the jquery / css area, html will hopefully fall in line from tinkering.

thanks again

neo

Don't worry about HTML, css and javascript. If you ever need it, it won't take long to learn enough to make a decent looking site. +1 for Twitter bootstrap. Lots of free templates for it too so you don't have to worry about what colours to use

Tar.Aldarion · 19-04-2014 8:35pm

neonitrix wrote: »

Hi Guys,

I would consider myself a strong-ish developer with a solid grounding in Java / Ruby plus a few others, getting good grades in the core languages, where I fall down is User Interface or Web Interface type stuff. I am not a designer and anything I touch ends up looking like a kid that has eaten too much skittles and drank too much coke put it together.

I have very little in languages that interact with web stuff, so my html css and javascript skills are not upto much by my own admission, have not touched on any of the 3 in college in any major way tbh.

As a developer do I stand a chance of avoiding the front end stuff, is there such a thing as a developer that only writes back end code, non user interface coding.

neo

I don't see why you need to know any of it if that is not the work you intend to be doing.

ChRoMe · 20-04-2014 12:26am

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

I don't see why you need to know any of it if that is not the work you intend to be doing.

Simple, because 90% of the jobs* out there are web based and with the idea of the full stack developer coming to prominence anyone doing customer facing systems need to do a bit of it.

* Number pulled from my arse but a quick look at monster.ie and the like suggest its not too far off point.

neonitrix · 20-04-2014 9:49am

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

I don't see why you need to know any of it if that is not the work you intend to be doing.

I can't see myself being happy doing it but I don't think I can avoid it when starting out as it is everywhere just am no good at it

Neo

Tar.Aldarion · 20-04-2014 12:05pm

Oh well if you have to you have to, I started 1.5 years ago and none of the places i interviewed fr had anything to do with web. I certainly wouldn't be happy doing it either I think. For designing the actual UIs and things we have a graphic designer so don't have to worry about that, also creates the resources, generally pretty things and developers are rarer.

CarefulNow · 20-04-2014 12:06pm

neonitrix wrote: »

I can't see myself being happy doing it but I don't think I can avoid it when starting out as it is everywhere just am no good at it

Neo

I'm not great at front end work but when you have Twitter Bootstrap in your back pocket it makes it so easy. Just keep your design simple and it'll work out fine. I was never keen on front end work until I did my FYP. I learned a bit of JavaScript and I'll be spending time after my exams to learn more of it.

neonitrix · 20-04-2014 12:25pm

thanks for the replies guys, honestly this question came about due to the issues im having with my final year project and the problems i am having trying to display dynamic data to the user, ie: building and appending divs to a parent div container, making them clickable so that you end up where your supposed to.

largely its working but god its breaking my heart when i comes to page resizing and divs deciding the dont want to live in the corner of the page lol.

would rather work on the java client server stuff till the cows come home, but i do see the need for javascript / jquery to interact with the dom elements on a page. just dont full understand everything im trying to implement.

thanks again

neo

John_Mc · 22-04-2014 11:59am

neonitrix wrote: »

thanks for the replies guys, honestly this question came about due to the issues im having with my final year project and the problems i am having trying to display dynamic data to the user, ie: building and appending divs to a parent div container, making them clickable so that you end up where your supposed to.

largely its working but god its breaking my heart when i comes to page resizing and divs deciding the dont want to live in the corner of the page lol.

would rather work on the java client server stuff till the cows come home, but i do see the need for javascript / jquery to interact with the dom elements on a page. just dont full understand everything im trying to implement.

thanks again

neo

Might be worthwhile looking at using Knockout JS for this.

Question: Graduate Developer Hons Degree

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