Magento development - too dificult for a junior developer?

Question

Hello there, I am a project manager for a small design agency and we are looking to bring on a new junior developer inline with a new project that he/she will be working on - a magento ecommerce site.

How difficult really is magento development? I have heard a lot about its steep learning curve, even for experienced developers but how true is this?

The project will last for around 6 weeks - would that be enough time for a new junior developer to gain enough experience whilst also creating the site i.e. no they will be diving straight in.

Would a junior php developer cope with this or would it be better to hire a more experienced php developer - or even look for an actual magento developer?

Thanks, John

Answer 1

I've tried my hand at using Magento for a few personal and professional projects. I was very impressed with how robust it is but when I tried customizing how things looked (even the theme) I found it incredibly difficult to work with.

I think anyone not a Magento developer by trade would need somewhat extensive training on developing for it. There's Magento books out there but from what I've read out of a few of them... The information is already out dated.

Personally, I'd get an actual Magento developer...

-- Logan

Answer 2

Six weeks will not be enough time for a new developer to really get the hang of Magento, and in fact I doubt that even an experienced developer will be able to do so without someone else to get them through the pitfalls.

Your best bet is to go with a developer who has worked on Magento in the past, and has already worked with the relevant parts of the system in the past.

Hope that helps.

Thanks, Joe

Answer 3

Its all true! Your junior developer cant learn Magento in 6 weeks, even if its an easy and simple project. In this case, I suggest you to hire an experienced developer to help you use all fantastic features of Magento.

Yes, because if learning curve is hard, Magento features reward all time lost with read, search, errors and tests, until be a "Magento Master". Cheers!

Answer 4

An experienced PHP developer is more likely to get up to speed quickly with Magento, but ONLY if they have used serious frameworks like Zend or CakePHP previously. There are many experienced PHP developers who have not dealt with genuinely object-oriented, enterprise quality frameworks like Magento, and they will struggle. Your garden variety PHP hacker will drown in Magento if thrown in the deep end.

On the other hand, if your junior dev has used Zend and actually understands OO, then they may do well - particularly if they learn well from example, there are many examples of well written Magento modules and kick-start tools (e.g. ModuleCreator). Anyone who merely copy/pastes random PHP code from Google will get horribly lost.

A lot of it comes down to personality and mindset of the individual. Don't assume that an experienced PHPer will find it easy, and vice versa. When you are doing your interviewing, get them to whiteboard some simple code for you - apply the FizzBuzz test, ask them to sketch out what Monopoly would look like in code, you need to see that they can actually think for themselves and apply problem-solving logic.

HTH, Jonathan