A Day in The Life of a Web Developer

Curious about what an average day in the life of a web developer looks like?

Well, meet Alex, one of our awesome web developers here at CaptainForm. Alex likes to play video games, watch tv series and go out with friends and colleagues for a beer, or 10 😉 .  He talks us through a typical working day, reveals the advantages and disadvantages that come with the job and shares his advice for aspiring web developers.

Enjoy!

First and foremost, why did you choose a career in web development?

My first choice was C++ development, but I didn’t knew anything about web development at that time.

It all started when my informatics teacher at that time ‘convinced’ me to participate in a contest held by the national anti-drug agency (ANA). That’s when I built my first website, and I won second place in the county with it.

In that moment, I knew that this is what I want to do.

I guess I chose web development because the output of my work had a much nicer presentation that way and it was more easily accessible to other people.

What does an average working day at CaptainForm look like?

I usually wake up around 9:30 AM, take a shower, get dressed and I head off to our office.

The first thing I do once I get there is reading my emails and then spend some time looking at my tasks for the day.

On Tuesday, every two weeks, we always have a sprint planning meeting to find out what features are coming up and get a brief overview of where each of us are with various features. After that, I’ll get straight into coding.

In between coding, I’m either tasked with bug fixes or a research for a new feature or integration.

No day is the same as you’ll be presented with new problems to solve or technologies to connect together.

What would be 3 things you do on a day to day basis?

My hair, haha.

I read my emails.

I try to learn something new or to improve something I already know.

What is the best thing about working at CaptainForm and what is your favorite part of your job?

Without a doubt it’s the team. It’s like a big family here and everyone cares for one another.

Web development is all about learning. I love the opportunity to learn and put into practice new things or out of the box ideas.

I enjoy working in a team that promotes so much learning and growth. There’s always more to learn with new technologies like HTML 5, CSS 3, new frameworks and new JavaScript libraries.

Any downsides of your job?

Work-life balance is often hard because things are evolving rapidly in this field and you need to constantly improve yourself to keep up with the technology.

Many times I get an idea and sit down to try it out and the next thing I know it’s 2 AM and the day passed without doing anything besides work.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a web developer?

“Just copy and paste the error message into Google.”

Start playing with web technologies, find out which one you like the most and make a few small projects using that technology. When you feel confident enough with your skills you can apply for a job or an internship in a company to start your career.

Try to keep up with the new technologies because you never know when the one you’re good at becomes obsolete and it will be harder to find a job.

Always improve yourself in order to be a better developer.

“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.” – Tim Duncan

Can you name 3 important skills a web developer needs?

Like in many other fields, the most important things you need to have are the passion for the job and the curiosity to keep learning.

Being a logical thinker is also really important, as you have to get your head around complex issues and try and make sense of them.

You also need a lot of patience because it’s easy to get frustrated when things go wrong

If you could have a superpower what would it be and why?

I guess it would be teleportation because I don’t like spending time in traffic and I could travel instantly to anywhere in the world 😀

Mind reading would also be a nice superpower.

Coffee or tea?

Coffee is my poison, but I drink it only for the taste because it has no effect on me.

Batman or Iron Man?

Iron Man.

Why?! I flipped a coin, because I like both of them equally.

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