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What College Classes Are Required To Obtain A Web Developer Degree?

by MrMintyBluez
8 replies
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Hey guys, any of you hold B.S degrees as a web developer? If so, what pre-requisites did you need, more directly, what level of math were you asked to accomplish ?
  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    At least in the US, nobody will be able to tell you. You need to state which college. One of my pet peeves about such places is that THEY set the standards. Those standards may, AND OFTEN DO, include things that have NOTHING to do with your applicable knowledge.

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author positivenegative
      Originally Posted by seasoned View Post

      At least in the US, nobody will be able to tell you. You need to state which college. One of my pet peeves about such places is that THEY set the standards. Those standards may, AND OFTEN DO, include things that have NOTHING to do with your applicable knowledge.

      Steve

      You DON'T say.
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  • Profile picture of the author agc
    lol. Are you saying someone shouldn't have bypassed all those liberal arts undergrad credits?

    I always figured the problem was too much caffeine, rather than too little schoolin' Of course, I could be wrong.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Originally Posted by MrMintyBluez View Post

    Hey guys, any of you hold B.S degrees as a web developer? If so, what pre-requisites did you need, more directly, what level of math were you asked to accomplish ?
    to be honest I don't think you should go for such a degree. You are much better off going for a general computing course or say a highlevel language like C

    Why?

    because web development is one of those areas now where what you can do trumps what you get on a piece of paper. You know your stuff and you can get a job. Its also true and amazing that money will go a far way more learning web programming online that off and you WILL BE MORE UP to DATE. Colleges often take too long to get training courses going. You could be in school now learning asp.net 4 but asp.net 5 will go live in 4-8 weeks. same with PHP.

    Finally too many colleges now are trying to claim HTML and CSS is web development. that won't mean squat and just make you more or less a dime a dozen designer. YOU need Javascript and probably another language like PHP or ruby to be a full developer. with Node though (javascript on the server) you could get away with just Javascript

    16 year olds are getting great jobs because they can program. IF you learn programming and get a general computing degree then you open up two worlds. IF you later can get an administrative position needing a degree then you'll have that where as with a "developers degree" you are still going to have to compete on what you can do versus those that don't have the degree anyway.

    P,S. great time to get into development.it is freaking AMAZING whats available for free in tools and training for a few dollars amonth
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  • Profile picture of the author agc
    I second the above.

    Get a computer science / programming degree, and a minor in commercial art and design.

    Don[t even bother learning Photoshop and Illustrator in school (unless they are already baked into the curriculum). You want things like "typography" "page design" "psychology of user interactions""color theory" "digital illustration" and the "psychology of design". Stuff like that.

    But the key is the programming. Without it, you're just another artist in line for the 5% of places that actually staff for it. With competence in programming, you can hire in as a developer, usually at a higher pay rate, and with your design background sort of naturally move into owning the visuals and user interactions. Which is often a product manager, and often pays even more then programming.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    If you want a 4 year degree go after something specialized like database security or at the very least database administrator (Oracle, SQL).
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    • Profile picture of the author agc
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      If you want a 4 year degree go after something specialized like database security or at the very least database administrator (Oracle, SQL).
      As someone who hires tech people, I strongly disagree.

      If you want something specialized and the fastest way to a new job... get a two year Associates Degree. That degree tells me you know that one narrow area, hopefully hands on with some lab time spent actually doing, and hopefully you picked up some on the job beyond that. A lot of time learning what do, not so much wondering why.

      The 4 year computer science degree tells me you should conceptually know data architecture, data modeling, efficient algorithms, and data normalization. Those are concepts that apply to nearly everything you will ever do as a developer. However the comp sci student probably has yet to put that rubber to an actual road. All that concept and theory directs the why and the how of most of what you do as a programmer.

      However the degree tells me that they studied it and should be able to apply those concepts to nearly any programming tasks, where as the assoc in database admin tells me you probably understand a lot of "what to do"s but are likely shaky on a lot of the "why"s

      If I'm looking to hire a hit the ground running junior programmer, I'm looking tech school, and expecting it will take some years to back fill a lot of theory.

      If I'm looking to hire a hit the ground running senior developer, I'm looking for tech school plus 5-10 years actual, and I'm going to tech hard on the conceptual stuff. Or I'm looking comp sci plus 2-5 years programming, and I'm going to tech hard on if they can actually write code (vs just liking to talk about it).

      I'm I'm looking to hire a junior developer with senior developer potential, I'm looking comp sci and expecting to spend some time on directed learning in actual coding.

      That's my view (opinion) from the business world.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by agc View Post

        As someone who hires tech people, I strongly disagree.

        If you want something specialized and the fastest way to a new job... get a two year Associates Degree.

        OP didn't say he wants anything fast, a BS is 4 years.

        Originally Posted by MrMintyBluez View Post

        Hey guys, any of you hold B.S degrees as a web developer? If so, what pre-requisites did you need, more directly, what level of math were you asked to accomplish ?
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