[thelist] Career Help

[Barney Carroll]

Hassan Schroeder wrote:
 > On 3/30/07, Nancy Johnson <nancychristine49 at yahoo.com> wrote:
 >
 > Sorry, this seems awfully vague, but --
 >
 >>   What would be the best way to update these skills?
 >
 > uh, however *you* learn best?
 >
 > Buy a book, work through a tutorial online, take a class, join a user
 > group. How would you *like* to update them?


I don't know just how much like the UK the US is, but from over here I'd 
say definitely /don't/ join any courses.

The number of people I've met of my age (20) who've come out of uni 
qualified for web design... Are usually at a disadvantage because 
they've spent formative years under the impression that they've been 
learning useful stuff. Educating these people is a lot like rehab for 
children of strong Catholic persuasions.

Get some skills, learn what you're dealing with, is what I tell them.

I'm not saying you're in that position, but as far as I've seen, 
paid-for education on the subject of this grand cyberweb of ours is 
about as good as the blurb for /Dreamweaver for dummies/.

Subscribing to this list is a good start. My general advice goes along 
the lines of

- Subscribe to evolt.org's, Eric Meyer's and the WSG's lists, and 
alistapart.com's RSS.
- Get Jeremy Keith's /DOM Scripting/ - http://domscripting.com/book/.
- Download Firefox and the Web Developer and Firebug extensions.

If you want to get into PHP, I'd recommend downloading and installing 
something like Mambo and experimenting. Set yourself tasks. Always have 
your mind on a desired result, and play about with the code to see if it 
gets close.

Experimenting and talking to others is always the best way to learn. 
Corporate IT education is useless except for learning the logic behind 
MS Office menus.


Regards,
Barney