Will I Enjoy Web Development: 7 Simple Questions

Don Smith, developer, teacher and puzzle aficionado, Auckland campus

Working in tech is becoming the latest dream job. Not since the firefighters, interior designers and marine biologists of primary school has a career seemed so idyllic. There’s this idea that it’s not all sweaty people in basements either — that a career in tech can actually be pretty fun, flexible, creative and rewarding. But how do you know if web development is right for you? What will it feel like on the ground, and will it suit your particular way of thinking? Take this quick little test to find out.

1. You close the door behind you and realise you are locked in, with your phone in a bag on the other side of the door. There are three openable windows in the room but you are three stories up. There is someone in the apartment across the street but traffic is very noisy. You do not know if your neighbours are home and there is no phone inside. Do you enjoy solving problems?
2. You are writing a note that says HELP when your limbs are suddenly frozen. The note falls to the floor. There is a dog in the room, facing you, that answers to four commands: Pick up, Drop, Forward, and Left. There is a note-sized hole in a door three meters ahead of you and two meters to the left. Do you enjoy figuring out what commands to use to reach your aim?
3. You regain the use of your limbs and search the room. You find 1.5 meters of string in two uneven pieces, approximately 9 pieces of long brown hair and a black elastic hair-tie, some hardened pre-chewed gum, two used earbuds and 900 toothpicks. Do you enjoy using your creativity to come up with solutions?
4. You realise you can build a catapult out of the toothpicks to fire your note through a one-foot gap in your neighbour’s window. Every time you fire the catapult it takes 6 minutes to set your aim, and a millimetre of change in the catapult can result in a difference in your aim of half a foot. You are testing with scrap pieces of paper and time is running out. Do you enjoy fine tuning your work to get the right result?
5. The door opens and five loud creatures come in. Your heart leaps with hope as, toothpicks in hand, you yell at them to leave it open. But they do not hear you and with the last one the door slams shut. You are all trapped. On closer inspection you realise that though every creature has a mouth and speaks very loudly, one only has use of its eyes, one can only use its ears, one can only taste, the other can only feel with its hands, while the last can only smell. But if you could organise the group, you could combine your weight and create a lever to push the door off its hinges. Do you enjoy solving communication challenges to enable a group to work together?
6. The door crashes triumphantly to the ground. The five creatures shriek with glee and storm down the corridor with the dog, knocking down sidetables in their haste and grabbing your bag as they go. They hurtle into the outside world, creating a wind tunnel that slams the last door shut behind them. You follow quickly, only to realise this second door has no handle on the inside. Do you enjoy the challenge of fixing a problem only to have another one appear?
7. You eventually get out, and meditate on your experiences. Using the enhanced fine-tuning and toothpick-based woodworking skills you’ve developed, you decide to invent a new type of door that can never lock a person inside, revolutionising the way people interact with new spaces. Do you enjoy using the skills you’ve learned to change people’s lives?

If you answered YES to any or all of these questions, you will love being a web developer (or a high-stakes escape artist in an alternate universe). We’d sure want to be trapped in a room with you!

Web development involves solving problems using the knowledge, the languages and the set of commands you know (that we teach you, and that you teach yourself). You can never know it all, so it’s about using what you’ve got to reach a defined goal. It’s fun, it’s tricky and it’s creative. If you can think outside the box, use the resources at your disposal and work with people, then web development is going to work for you.

If you’re thinking of changing gear in the New Year, apply for Dev Academy’s web development programme. It starts with around 12 weeks of remote preparation, which you complete from home (or where ever) in your spare time. This phase enables everyone, from total beginners to people that have studied programming, to learn enough to hit the ground running when they enter the training. After the preparation phase you enter our campus in Eden Terrace, Auckland, or Cuba Street, Wellington, for 9 weeks of intensive full-immersion training.

Apply now and talk to us about your options, and why tech is right for you. If you apply by Christmas, you could be graduating with the skills to start your web development career by May 2018.