How to become a web developer in Nigeria

Career Choice 201

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another episode of the career choice series.

In my previous articles, I wrote on how to start a career in mobile repair and accessory sales.

In case you went through those articles and found out that they are not exactly what you want to do, you may want to consider a career in web development as a web developer.

It’s one of the south after skilled in the job place today and a great career that any young Nigerian can develop and be successful.

In this article, we will be focusing on the following questions that you might have been asking yourself over a period of time:

1. Who is a Web Developer?
2. What are the Skills of a web developer?
3. How do I learn the skills of a web developer?
4. What’s the salary of a web developer?
5. How do I land a web developer job?
6. Why consider being a web developer?

Good, I think we are now ready to begin with the very first question in this episode.

1.     Who is a Web Developer?

A web developer is anyone whether male or female, young or old who designs, structures and builds a website or a web application.

Now does a web developer make use of concrete, cement, wood, or roofing sheets to build a website or web application? Of course not.

Instead, a web developer makes use of languages such as HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT, and so on to make the very things we see on a web page through our smartphones, computers, and tablets.

Without developers, there will be no web, no mobile apps, and definitely no internet.

So web developers are an important part of technology in this century and the centuries to come.

There are different categories into which web developers are grouped:

Front-end web developers

Back-end web developers

Full-stack web developers

And this leads to our second web development question.

2.     What are the Skills of a web developer?

See also: How to Start a Career as a Mobile Phone Repair Technician.

As I said a web developer skills depend a lot on the web development career an aspiring web developer wants to learn.

So if you are considering web development as a web developer in Nigeria, the first thing you need to do is to sit down and think about which category you will like to work in.

So take your time to go through our detailed explanation of each web developer category and then make your decision before you go into the real world as a web developer. Now let’s begin with the first:

Front-End web developer

Put simply a front-end web developer is a web developer who is concerned majorly about the physical appearance of a webpage, a website, and a web application.

These include the main things you can see. Front-end web developers make use of the languages I mentioned earlier HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT.

Front-end web developer makes a thing like navigation bars, menus, they add colors, pictures, videos, and so on that you see on a web page.

You don’t need to learn much to be a front-end web developer. You don’t need to be a tech guru so to speak to learn front-end web development.

Here are the fundamental coding languages you, however, need to learn to be a front-end web developer:

HTML-Hyper Text Markup Language

As the name implies this web development or coding language is such to structures, format, arrange, or layout webpages. It is used to create things such as headings, paragraphs, links, etc.

It is a must-know language for any web developer but most especially any front-end web developer.

HTML is one of the easiest languages to learn and that should be a front-end web developer starting point to get into the world of web development.

CSS-Cascading Style Sheet

Have you ever been to a site and you love the looks and feel of that website? That is the work of CSS.

A front-end web developer makes use of CSS to add color, fonts, and styles to HTML elements, that is why a lot of web developers today have termed CSS as HTML’s sister.

This is a must-learn skill for any front end web developer as no one will visit a horribly looking web page.

JAVASRIPT

This is the first programming language of a front-end web developer. It is used to create interactive web pages and mobile apps.

It works ranges from form validation, autocomplete to event handling in a web page.

It is also used by a front-end web developer to do just about anything that involves changing web content without a user manually reloading the page.

After these basic skills, a front-end web developer should also have basic knowledge of JAVASCRIPT libraries like JQUERY.

These are already written code that can be inserted into web projects this helps to make development easy and fast as basic JAVASCRIPT functions like interactive forms and image galleries are already written.

Next, a front-end web developer needs to learn JAVASCRIPT frameworks like backbone.js, angular.js, react.js, vue.js, and so on.

These are collections of libraries that can be used for web development projects. They also help to provide structure for where your code should go and how they should be structured.

All these are the skills of a front-end web developer. Now, remember that front-end development is the easiest path to follow if you want to start your career as a web developer in Nigeria or anywhere in the world.

Back-End Web Developer

If front-end web developers deal with what we can see on a web page or web application, then back-end web developers do just the exact opposite.

They deal with pretty almost anything that is happening behind the scene.

This is a pretty complex category of web developers as it requires learning sophisticated web development languages that are used for scripting, retrieving, and sending data to the database.

Below are the skills a back-end web developer should develop to be effective and proficient as you start your career as a web developer in Nigeria:

PYTHON

Python is an object-oriented programming language. Python can be used by a web developer in front-end web development or in the back-end web development but as most of its use in the back-end web development.

The importance of object-oriented languages like Python is to help web developers or any developer at all to be able to create real-world objects and allow those objects to interact with each other.

This makes it easy for a web developer to organize and create complex programs.

To start your career as a web developer in Nigeria especially as a back-end web developer you need to learn a language like python.

PHP

PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor.PHP is a scripting language used by back-end web developers on the server hence the name server-side language.

Back-end web developers use PHP to make a web browser send a request to a web server and this webserver thus replies with HTML code which is then displayed in the browser.

Cool interaction right.

So if a web developer or the user of a site writes an article or a blog or post, backend web developers use PHP so that such posts or articles automatically requested from the server in which they were previously stored and then automatically display them on the part of the page in which they ought to be displayed.

PHP is definitely a language to learn if you want to start your career as a web developer in Nigeria in back-end web development.

RUBY AND RUBY ON RAILS

Ruby is a very simple and productive programming language that a back-end web developer should consider while learning to start off a career as a web developer in Nigeria.

It doesn’t follow the same syntax that most programming languages follow.

It is directed majorly towards using human-readable language rather than machine language. Much knowledge of mathematics is not required.

Like JAVASCRIPT frameworks, Rails is a collection of already written ruby codes used to build and control the back-end of websites and web applications.

Next, to start your career as a web developer in Nigeria as a back-end web developer you need to know CMS:

Content Management Systems (CMS)

An example of a content management system is WORDPRESS. 30% of the world’s webpages were created using WORDPRESS.

Web developers make use of WORDPRESS to publish, post, or even create a site by making use of the user interface of that CMS without having to code from scratch.

And a cool thing about this is that changes are shown immediately when making use of WORDPRESS. Although WORDPRESS is not the only CMS available it still remains the leading CMS used by web developers.

Currently, it has 60% usage among CMS usages.

These are the skills you need if you want to start a career as a back-end web developer.

It is not usually advised as the start point for newcomers into the world of web development.

So to start your career as a web developer in Nigeria back-end web development is not advised.

But if you trust in your abilities to catch up quickly then why not? Don’t be discouraged.

Full-Stack Web Developer

This is pretty much referring to a web developer who has both the knowledge of a front-end web developer and a back-end web developer.

Reaching the stage of a full-stack web developer will definitely take time.

Full-stack web developers, however, have the advantage of being able to work in any aspect of web development.

A lot of leading tech companies like FACEBOOK prefer to hire full-stack web developers because they are flexible and can easily change roles when needed to.

They receive higher paying salaries than both front-end web developers and back-end web developers.

3.     How to learn the skills of a web developer

Perhaps you have now decided which category of web developer you want to belong to. Don’t waste time doubting if you should be a web developer or not.

Start learning the skills of a web developer.

There are different ways to begin learning the skills you need, but it’s possible that you have heard some things about web development that might be holding you back from pursuing a career in web development for example:

Web development is for genius.

It requires a high level of mathematics.

It takes too long to learn.

Need a bachelor’s degree to start your career as a web developer in Nigeria.

Now let’s take these points one after the other:

For Genius

Perhaps you have a preconceived idea about who web development is for. Maybe from what others have told you or from what you have seen in movies.

Whatever you heard is not true.  Web development is for everyone. Young and old.

All you have to do is to give it your time and you will be on your way to starting your career as a web developer in Nigeria or to becoming a web developer who loves web development.

High-Level Mathematics

Although the basic idea of mathematics is necessary to grow as a web developer, you don’t actually need a huge knowledge of mathematics.

Your addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and pretty much anything in BODMAS is all that you need.

Take too long to learn

Depending on your time and your dedication you can actually learn enough skill to kick start your career as a web developer in Nigeria in less than 6months.

A very interesting thing is you can start making money while learning that’s cool right? I know.

Bachelor’s Degree

When I hear people say you need to be a graduate with a college degree to become a web developer, I laugh.

Although having a degree will give you more advantage to start your career as a web developer in Nigeria as it would in any field but it’s not a requirement to be a web developer.

The majority of web developers who work as freelancers or with tech companies do not really possess a college degree.

So just don’t worry about that.

As long as you have confidence in your skill as a web developer and you have something to show for it, you will definitely hit that web development job.

So how do you learn programming in Nigeria?

Search for online courses on the internet, COURSERA, UDEMY, LINKEDIN courses, and so on. There is a plethora of online resources on learning how to become a web developer or learning programming in Nigeria.

But if you want a private tutor in web development so you can build confidence through the hands-on project at a very cheap, price, leave a comment after reading this article and I will take it up from there.

4.     How much do web developers make in Nigeria?

Now does web development worth all the hustle and all the dedication and devotion. Is it even worth quitting one’s present job? Here we have the average salary or how much a web developer makes in Nigeria?

According to indeed.com at entry-level, web developers make $61,512 per annum working full time.

how much is that in Naira and Kobo? Do the calculation!

After about 3 years of experience, this average becomes $108,409 for mid-level front-end web developers while back-end web developers make up to $128,148 per year.

Rounding Up

Now how do you land a job as a web developer in Nigeria?

This will be in a future article in Career Choice 201. If you feel this is the right path for you, take the necessary steps now. Times waits for no one, you too don’t wait for time.