A web developer is a programmer who specializes in, or is specifically engaged in, the development of World Wide Web applications, or distributed network applications that are run over HTTP from a web server to a web browser.
Nature of employment
Web developers can be found working in all types of organizations, including large corporations and governments, small and medium sized companies, or alone as freelancers. Some web developers work for one organization as a permanent full-time employee, while others may work as independent consultants, or as contractors for an employment agency.
Type of work performed
Modern web applications often contain three or more tiers,[1] and depending on the size of the team a developer works on, he or she may specialize in one or more of these tiers - or may take a more interdisciplinary role.[2] For example, in a two person team, one developer may focus on the technologies sent to the client such as HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and on the server-side frameworks (such as Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, ASP, .NET, .NET MVC) used to deliver content and scripts to the client. Meanwhile the other developer might focus on the interaction between server-side frameworks, the web server, and a database system. Further, depending on the size of their organization, the aforementioned developers might work closely with a content creator/copy writer, marketing advisor, web designer, web producer, project manager, software architect, or database administrator - or they may be responsible for such tasks as web design and project management themselves.
Educational and licensure requirements
There are no formal educational or licensure requirements to become a web developer. However, many colleges and trade schools offer coursework in web development. There are also many tutorials and articles, which teach web development, freely available on the web - for example: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Basic_ JavaScript
Even though there are no formal educational requirements, dealing with web developing projects requires those who wish to be referred to as web developers to have advanced knowledge/skills in:
- HTML/XHTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Server/Client side architecture
- Programming/Coding/Scripting in one of the many server-side frameworks (at least one of: Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, CFML - ColdFusion, Java, ASP, .NET, .NET MVC)
- Ability to utilize a database
See also
References
