You are a web developer. How many languages (and related skills) do you know?

Question

Hello guys, I am not sure if my question is appropriate here. If not, please close.

I just wanted to know how many languages an average web developer in this site know?

For me, I can do html, css, xml, javascript, php/mysql, ajax, photoshop, illustrator, flash, flex, Actionscript 3, wordpress. I can do medium level graphic design and programming. I will be looking for a job very soon but not sure what kind of level I should aim for (web developer job title is my first option, but don't know if I should learn other languages before I jump into the market).

In many web development job requirement, they list almost all web related languages (C++, JAVA, Ruby, .Net, Perl, etc.). I was wondering if that's the actual scenario that every web developer has to know all of them before getting hired. I appreciate if anyone can help me with it. Thanks!

Answer 1

Every job will be different. Frequently the listed skills on a req don't match what you actually need once you get in there. I would apply to anything that seems reasonable and interesting to you, and let them decide if your skill set warrants an interview. Then, in the interview when they ask you if you have any questions, that's your time to prob what you'll be spending the majority of your time doing and whether or not it's a good fit between you and the company.

Also, I would suggest listing a ranking with each skill. I.e., on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, rank your skill with each technology relative to your peers.

Oh, and I'm not a web developer, but I've had occasion to use ASP .net, PHP5, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSLT and Flash/ActionScript. I wouldn't hire anyone with less than that, and they should be an expert (8-10 on my scale) in at least one or two.

Answer 2

Purely web development roles tend to have the stack you mentioned above (albeit Photoshop and Illustrator are hardly languages). However, with that particular stack, you are limiting yourself in the commercial sense. For example, Ruby (especially rails) is also quite popular as a web development language and you may miss out on that.

If I may make a suggestion. Focus on programming techniques rather than languages. Picking up a new language is always beneficial, as it will not only improve your understanding of your language of choice but it will also broaden your horizon, so to speak.

Answer 3

I've never seen a shop that uses multiple technology stacks like that. Usually they are divided into Microsoft related technologies (.Net, IIS, Sql Server), Java related (Java, Tomcat), or other FOSS related stacks (PHP, Linux, Apache, MySQL, maybe Perl).

Ultimately, most web developers will gain lots of experience in one or two of these realms.

If a job requirement is listing all of C++, ".Net", Ruby and Perl as prerequisite "web languages", I would be afraid to work there.

Answer 4

The skills you listed seem to be more design than development to be honest (flash, photoshop, etc).

Any company that lists all web related languages in a position are clearly looking for a generalist, is that something you want?

Decide on what your key skills are and focus on those.

To answer your question, I'm primarily a .NET developer, but I know enough in other languages to get by. I certainly wouldn't think of myself as a Java or a PHP developer just because I've done some work with them however.

Still, a certain level of language agnosticism has its advantages I suppose.

Answer 5

there are some people who are familiar with multiple languages (especially the C based ones). unless you are a super-genius, you can master all of those languages and get any programming job you apply to.

Answer 6

I was wondering if that's the actually scenario that every web developer has to know all of them before getting hired.

I guess that depends on whether you're being hired to work on any/every web site (e.g. to be employed by a company which handles outsourced web development), or hired to work on one web site (e.g. to be employed by a company to work on their own web site).

To work on one web site implemented using ASP.NET, for example, I only had to know C#, the part of the .NET framework that's relevent to ASP.NET, HTML, and bit of CSS (not Java, Ruby, Perl, etc.).