The career of a web developer is an interesting one with many slopes. Considering a learning curve this steep, you can fully expect to live through periods of frustration, enlightenment, self-righteousness, and every mindset in between. In this article, we'll have some fun, by reviewing each of these phases through the lens of a meme!

Some of the phases include:

• Phase 1 - Noob
• Phase 3 - Complete Frustration
• Phase 5 - Fragile Code
• Phase 7 - Cocky
• Phase 9 - When Code Becomes Art
• Phase 10 - Seasoned

Check out the post for the images of these and the others on their "top 11" list.

The web development industry is one that is always growing because of how we use the web. No longer do we expect the Internet to simply host a digital pamphlet for a business. The expectations nowadays are for a site to be rich with content, provide the means for visitors to interact and be dynamic in every interaction. With the demand at an all time high, freelance web developers may think that there is little they could do to harm their career. Unfortunately, there are many ways that people in this industry sabotage themselves when it comes to their career.

Among the things they recommend avoiding are practices like clinging to older technologies, failing to network with other developers and market themselves and forgetting why you were hired in the first place.

In this day and age, everyone uses the internet for finding new jobs or to find a new employee, but more and more I sense that it's all turning into one big mess. This blog post is devoted to all those people contacting me because they have the best job position. [...] I know it's a tough market out there, lot's of competition and so many technologies and skills to keep track off. I know, but it is [you, the recruiter's] business! You decided to dive right into the job chaos, so don't cry if you have to do a bit of work. Do you think we just turn on the computer and it writes code itself ? You do your job, I do mine.

He points out a few specific times a recruiter has sent emails about a "direct hire position" that needs filling immediately or a Java developer (when, clearly, Michelangelo is a PHP developer). He also points out to recruiters that, despite what they may think, they're almost never the only one getting in contact about the same job.

if you're out looking for a new PHP job, go check out the community itself. Most of us have a list of companies with PHP job vacancies or we have a shortlist of trustworthy, understanding recruiters that have touched base with the PHP community and won't let you down once you sign up.

With the rise of PHP developer as career, many are trying to get their share in the pie. Lately I've met a number of developers who have worked for more than one/two years in developing PHP applications in various companies and they consider themselves as "senior" developers.

Key things to keep an eye out for are the "more talk, less code" they tend to do and the lack of dedication to the tasks at hand. These bad developers then follow up with the typical blame to the junior developers, noting that it was them being difficult that caused all of the "real" problems.

Good developers who know and want to work in PHP are hard to come by. Consider that perhaps PHP is so popular because it does some jobs really well. [...] To me, [Terry's quote] says that PHP is a pretty good scripting language to be getting stuck into, that its something that you should be using if you want to develop web applications that are used by hundreds of thousands of users across the world.

He points out some developers that are almost ashamed for knowing PHP, thinking that it's a "low level" sort of language that doesn't really count in a world of Javas and .NETs. Too bad they're apparently oblivious to the high quality, enterprise level applications that are developed with it and use it every day. Shame to be missing out on that because of some silly personal opinions...