Hey Chris, I'm looking for a career change at the moment. Maybe I should get into this malarkey. It sounds like fun. Only thing is, I've got no computer skills and the only qualification I have is a philosophy degree. Will it take long to pick up?
To get started, honestly no it won't. I've got a degree in Comp Science and certifcation for various things but you can teach yourself from complete novice upwards.
It depends on what you want to do!
Its hard to segment out but you do something like :
- all in one developer (gather requirements from talking to people, design a solution, do the gfx, code it, manager and deliver it fully end to end, even host it if you want)
- do a few stages from above (usually related things). I'm in this category.
- just do one stage from above.
If you have artistic talent then I'd strongly suggest you aim for design and the 'lighter' more client oriented side of development.
Things you might want to look at here are photoshop skills, using a mac, Flash+ActionScript or Flex, CSS and CSS-P, HTML etc. Nice and fluffy technologies. You can get some corking API's for this level of coding like Dojo toolkit, Scriptaculous and various lightweight 3D api's etc for the browser.
You can still achieve a HELL of a lot with them, but they are only client sided and you will be restricted. Lot of work (more in the South in my experience) for this skill set.
If you have dabbled in coding before I'd suggest maybe an interim technology like PHP v5 (go down the PHP OO route, its the future of PHP imo!). You can do a lot with this and create applications that have database backends and can maintain state and have data access/feeds etc.
Also a good place to start if you are not artistic at all
You can blend PHP with Flex to create great applications and you would get a fair amount of work with these skills.
I'd say PHP is a mid sized project technology in the right hands but I've seen it used in major systems(wikipedia uses it with MySQL!). Not a great idea imo, but people use it all the same.
Then you move on to the more enterprise level orientated stuff. Java Enterprise, .NET (and its myriad of ++/# languages), Perl(eugh) etc. Can be used with any of the above, but usually implemented using some sort of framework like Atlas, Struts, Wicket, Mono, Stripes, Spring Webflow, etc and a complete 'flavour' front to back for compatability.
Mix in some databases and their languages(not just ansi-sql) for good measure like MySql, Infomix, Oracle, derby, etc and you are good to go
The above is mainly for distributed type of systems, you can also go for standalone application development in(lots of things really, but) C++, Java, C# etc Not my bag really, but I've done it and didn't like it
It really just depends on what you want to do.
To get started. Decide what type of thing you want to be doing development wise. Get a book, read it, make sure you understand at least the basics! Get on a forum/chat room for that language and start asking questions(most developers are quite helpful in my experience).
I'd take a course too. You can do courses that last 2 weeks and are quite decent (I've given these courses to people and read notes from other peoples courses, and had them myself for new techs).
Getting a job isn't that hard. Just give your CV to one of the many bloodsucking agencies out there and your phone won't stop... even when you are employed... for years afterwards... If you know someone that might be able to get your foot in a door (even for free if need be), get some experience and stick it on your CV. Experience counts for more than qualifications in this industry. A LOT more.
