Essential Skills for Web Development

Rajesh Pillai — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:38:14 GMT

Many times in the Career advice section at http://www.dotnetfunda.com/advices/ we are asked this question

What are the essential skills for a web developer?

Rather than posting/reposting time and again, thought of writing a post about it. This post details what according to me and some of the well established people I know think about essential skills that a web developer should posses.

You can find similar entry at Essential Skills for Web Developer in 2010

HTTP/TCP protocol from a very high overview perspective
JavaScript/CSS/XHTML
ASP.NET of-course (since you will be opting for MS technologies)
Authentication/ Authorization techniques
WCF/Web Services
AJAX
jQuery (and similar javascript libraries like Prototype, ExtJS etc.)
Unit Testing / Integration Testing (NUnit, MBUnit, Selenium, WatiN etc or VS Test)
Silverlight awareness
Common design patterns
Strong Object Oriented skills

Happy Programming !!!

How would you like to grow your skill/career path?

Rajesh Pillai — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:19:03 GMT

Career/Skill Path

Each individual is playing different roles. Some are software engineer, some are programmer, tech lead, architect, project manager
and so on… How would your skill to develop over a period of time so that you can take the next step and will prove to be true to your designation.
Here are some of the check list… Check what skills you have and develop the one which you don’t currently possess. It’s not just about
superficial skill, but true skill I am talking about.

Don’t go over the list by names and say I know this…. Check whether you truly understand this.

AND ALSO DON’T RUN AWAY FROM THIS LIST.

Over a period of time I will send some useful info about each of the below areas.

Those who are more inclined towards technology here’s the basic skillset you should have.

- Domain Knowledge

o Finance/Banking

o Healthcare

o Insurance

- OO

o Principles and Practices

o SOLID Principles

§ S – SRP – Single Responsibility Principle

§ O – OCP – Open Closed Principle

§ L – LSP – Liskov Substitution Principle

§ I – ISP – Interface Segregation Principle

§ D – DIP – Dependency Inversion Principle

- TDD/BDD (It’s not just about creating test class, its about understanding the whole process)

o Understanding and appreciating TDD or TFD

o How to move towards BDD (Behaviour Driven Development)

- DDD (Domain Driven Design)

- Databases

o SQL Server

o Business Intelligence

o Datawarehouse

- Design Patterns

o Good awareness about GOF patterns (All 23)

o Enterprise patterns

§ Domain Logic Pattens

· Transaction Script

· Domain Model

· Table Module

· Service Layer

§ Data Source Patterns

· Table Data Gateway

· Row Data Gateway

· Active Record

· Data Mapper

§ Object Relational Behavioral Pattern

· Unit of Work

· Identity Map

· Lazy Load

§ Object Relational Metadata Mapping Patterns

· Metadata Mapping

· Query Object

· Repository

§ Web Presentation Patterns

· MVC

· Page Controller

· Front Controller

· Template View

· Application Controller

· MVP

· MVVM

§ Distribution Patterns

· Remote Façade

· Data Transfer Object

§ Offline Concurrency Patterns

· Optimistic Offline Lock

· Pessimistic Offline Lock

· Coarse-Grained Lock

· Implicit Lock

§ Session State Patterns

· Client Session State

· Server Session State

· Database Session State

§ Foundational Patterns

· Gateway

· Mapper

· Layer Supertype

· Value Object

· Plugin

· Service Stub

o Refactoring Patterns

o Dependency Injection/IOC Framework

§ Unity Application Block

§ StructureMap

§ Castle Windsor

§ Spring.NET

§ Autofac

§ LinFu

§ PicoContainer.NET

o Instrumentation (includes logging)

o Technologies

§ ASP.NET 3.5 +

§ WCF (XML + XSD + WSDL + SOAP + REST + SOA)

§ LINQ

§ ASP.NET MVC

§ WF

§ Sharepoint 2007

Those interested in project management here’s the basic skillset

Apart from good awareness of the above skills following are some areas where you need to concentrate on

- People skills

o Dealing with people

o Effective communication

o Goal orientation

o Target setting

- Estimation Techniques

o Use case

o Function points (…. More)

- Agile Methodology

o SCRUM

o DSDM

- Tools

o MS Excel/Word

o MS Project

- Hope you enjoyed this post.