Web Development as a career?

[sn00pie]

When I was about 13 years old, I got started on web developing my own little portfolio websites to showcase my talents. I found that even at the age the best program available was (at the time) Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. I was actually better at graphics design at that time, then web-development

I'm 19 now, and currently attending college with little or no idea of what I want to do in the future. Thus why, I'm considering reigniting my old hobby and turning it into perhaps a career.

I realize there are dozens of web developers on this forum, thus why I'd imagine that I will get the best responses here.

1. Is dropping out of college to become a web designer really a plausible idea in the long run? As far as I know unless your really good at what you do, there's no space for more web designers in the market.

2. How do you build a clientele? Put an advertisement in the newspaper and hope your phone rings?

3. Or I could forget all this and continue pursuing a career in law enforcement.

Thanks!

 

[frankblundt]

You can always do both - stay in college and do freelance web design at the same time, slowly build up a few clients, and then make a decision when you finish.

web development as a career - yes there are a lot of designers / developers in the market, but you could say that about just about any field. There is and always will be a shortage of good designers / developers.

The most important thing is to work out what you like doing - if you like doing it, you'll get good at it whether you are now or not, because the main driver behind talent is practice and the easiest way to stick at practicing is to enjoy it.

There is pretty weighty evidence behind the idea that most 'geniuses' actually just worked really hard, for a really long time, at what they do. They reckon it takes about 10,000 hours to be brilliant at anything - guitar / baseball / coding / design.

The hardest bit - working out what you like doing. I started out doing engineering, then switched to an English major but now spend most of my time (work and free) doing web development in PHP. Thinking about it, I worked out that what I really like doing is puzzle solving (which is involved in all three). I wouldn't say I'm good at PHP yet, but I know I'm getting there, and will get there because I enjoy it enough to stick with it.