Open Source is Continuing to Dominate

Programming is not what it used to be. When I first started programming in High School I did not know where to get other code to learn about what corresponded to what functions and further syntax functions that were not directly taught by my teacher. My high school teacher showed me some basic HTML and CSS code such as links, text styles, and images so I was forced to work within those basic frameworks without realizing how much more advanced I could have been programming. Currently the World Wide Web has exploded into a dynamic open source sharing platform where virtually any code to a function can be found if searched online properly.

By inspecting the element of any item or looking at a page source it is easy to figure out what someone did to accomplish a certain function on their website. Copying other code is frowned upon but very difficult to stop or enforce and thus is a frequent habbit of many web developers and coders. There is also a plethora of websites such as W3 Schools, Code Academy, WordPress, and Drupal that make building a website easier than ever. It is almost as if going to school to learn programming is no longer necessary when so much online is at your disposal. Why go into one hundred thousand dollar debt when you could be making one hundred thousand simply by learning the necessary programming languages and skills on your own to get hired.

Additionally, most colleges will only focus on one programming language, but a good programmer can use many different languages. Web design and development often requires the integration of many different languages such as php, css, mysql, Ruby on Rails, javascript and html 5, so being restricted to one or two programming languages is not what it takes to be programmer that a good company might hire. The truth is, a college degree is mainly the credential to get you past the human resources department into the interview when much of what you learn is available free online or in a book somewhere. When you get an interview all that matters is what you can do and how well you can do it, not where you went to school. If you are a competent individual with promise and the ability to learn independently a company will want to hire you.

Personally, anyone that would be going into debt to go to college unless they are 100 percent sure they want to be a lawyer or doctor, is making a huge mistake given the dire economic scenarios building worldwide, centralizing in Europe, and the largest economy in the world when aggregated. Learning to program and other graphic design abilities is in high demand worldwide, and there are many affordable technical schools or online resources to garner such knowledge and skills. Going into debt is never a good unless you have a strong plan to build up wealth beyond the debt accumulated and most college students lack such skills and foresight. Thus I suggest taking a more cautious approach by building up computer and internet skills before jumping into a debt burdening bachelors or master’s program.

WEB 2.0 AND OPEN SOURCE

With major open source web design and development platforms wordpress.org and drupal.org it is no longer worth working with a template restrictive company such as web.com or 1and1.com. These companies simplify the process of building a website, however your brand recognition, call to action, and ability to upgrade your website with new programming and internet trends will be limited. Being restricted to a template will stop you from beating the competition, because there will be another company that competes with you locally using a more dynamic platform such as wordpress or drupal.

With social media dominating the forefront of internet companies this decade it is integral to develop an interactive website for your business. Open source platforms are great for this because they are always improving and building with the progress of internet and programming trends. Using a theme to start out is not necessarily a bad thing and is actually the best way to get something up quickly and fast as long as you have the ability to add custom features and functions into the site later on. WordPress.org and most other open source platforms do not restrict you to the templates or themes and you can usually work around their initial restrictions. If you have competent programming skills it is easy to develop functionality far beyond what the original template was designed to do.

The open source network is growing rapidly, and WordPress, the largest open source platform is now managing over 22 percent of all new websites as of 2011. This is astounding considering WordPress is not even ten years old. Drupal, however, is in some ways much more dynamic than WordPress although it is not as widely used. There are some major sites built with Drupal such as whitehouse.gov, and its customizability as a platform allows users to build massive websites with hundreds of pages of content without the trouble most web design software programs could give you. Joomla is also a very powerful open source platform that is great for designing visually appealing sites than WordPress. Additionally, Magento Ecommerce and other open source eCommerce platforms make building an eCommerce easier than ever before. eCommerce used to be a difficult and time consuming process, but Magento and other open source eCommerce platforms provides the ability to create massive eCommerce websites within a fraction of the time of hand coding.

The open source community is set to grow faster than ever, especially with internet revenues skyrocketing coupled with developing countries increased availability of high speed internet access. Programmers of all backgrounds and ages are able to collaborate, ask questions on forums, and download plugins and widgets to customize their websites to their liking, creating a wave of unique and robust internet content like never before. It will be interesting to see the open source community evolve, as it is now becoming a major if not dominating force on the web.