Is it worth teaching yourself Development or is it better to hire a pro?

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scottyxx

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Is it better for you to teach yourself HTML, CCS, PHP, Web stardards, Perl, etc, or do you think is it better to hire someone who is a professional and pay them to do it for you?

I am torn, I do enjoy teaching myself and seeing what I can do, but at the same time a Professional knows better and knows how to secure your website, and get it working in the optimal way.

What do you think?
 
I taught myself HTML years ago. Today, I would hire and do hire a professional to do any development work if I need it. I keep my website fair simple though. It sounds nice to be able to do everything myself, but sometimes it a better return on my investment to hire someone who knows what he or she is doing. This way, I can concentrate on other things.
 
scottyxx said:
Is it better for you to teach yourself HTML, CCS, PHP, Web stardards, Perl, etc, or do you think is it better to hire someone who is a professional and pay them to do it for you?

I am torn, I do enjoy teaching myself and seeing what I can do, but at the same time a Professional knows better and knows how to secure your website, and get it working in the optimal way.

What do you think?
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I prefer to do everything myself as I can guarantee what will be achieved, and if I'm dissapointed in the results I'm the only one to blame. A great benefit of learning to develop a website yourself is the fact that everytime you need a change made you don't have to consult with your web designer, and you just simply go change it. It's good to at least understand what's being done so you can tell if they're doing a good job behind and the scenes as far as SEO and not just visually. If you have the time to spend on a professional web designer / web developer and your time is more valuable than the money you're going to spend, then definitely go that route. If you have enough time to invest in learning web design and you plan to build multiple websites I'd suggest just learning to do it.
 
It's important to have some understanding of programming, otherwise you'll have to spend money for every little tweak that might be needed.

I would say you should do both, hire and learn, in that order. Your learning can be an on-going process, while the hired developer gets and keeps the ball rolling. Make sure the developer comments his code. This is vital for future development and troubleshooting.

There are plenty of free, on-line educational sources for learning whichever programming languages you choose.
 
I am still torn, although I am pretty sure I could create a working, and very nice looking website I would worry about other things these days. For example Security. I feel like I can teach myself HTML quickly, PHP fairly easily, and even Javascript, but in the end, I do not have enough real world experience to know the security risks, or even know if my site is vulnerable, this is something I think a professional would offer. Lets say, your site does get hacked, with only yourself as the developer, you can be left, confused, helpless, and scratching your head, but with a professional, you can turn around and blame them, and say you left my site open...now fix it!
 
scottyxx said:
I am still torn, although I am pretty sure I could create a working, and very nice looking website I would worry about other things these days. For example Security. I feel like I can teach myself HTML quickly, PHP fairly easily, and even Javascript, but in the end, I do not have enough real world experience to know the security risks, or even know if my site is vulnerable, this is something I think a professional would offer. Lets say, your site does get hacked, with only yourself as the developer, you can be left, confused, helpless, and scratching your head, but with a professional, you can turn around and blame them, and say you left my site open...now fix it!
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My perspective on the security of websites is that there needs to be a pretty valid reason for a hacker to take the time to attack your site. I don't mean to say that people haven't hacked websites for no good reason, but with the type of knowledge required to do malicious type of attacks on a website it's not really worth your time and effort to try and hack into a website coded by a beginner. Where's the challenge in that? Plus the biggest thing is having a strong passwords to all your accounts associated with and allowing access to your website. If you have a good password and aren't downloading crazy viruses then the effort required to hack into your site is even greater. Even if you only coded a hello world script for your website, without your password the hacker would have to bi-pass the security of your hosting provider or domain registrar to do any damage (to my knowledge...correct me if I'm wrong). The only issue I've had with bad neighbors online is spam, and there are of course methods to prevent spam even without extensive knowledge of programming languages or advanced coding skills.
 
It thoroughly depends on urgency of the task I think, you can choose accordingly.
If you want to learn the things to do it afterwards, why pay a professional for that.
If the time limit is critical, you can go for a professional and get it done!
 
Yes, it definitely is worth the time and effort you spend on it.

Look at it this way. When you have a site up and running in production mode, you want it to stay up 24/7/365. Leaving aside problems on the server side which can only be handled by the technicians onsite, there are still other problems which may bring down your site. So if you don't know nuts about development tools, then you will just have to wait for the site developer to come online before you can solve your problem. Truth be told you are the one and only person you can depend on 24/7/365.
 
While a professional does know better than someone who teaches themselves in the field, some people may want to make sure that the job gets done the way they want it. Personally, I would prefer to develop my own code for that kind of thing, as I know that the way I perform the task ensures my own satisfaction. In this economy, especially for a student like me, it might not be easier to do it myself, but it's definitely cheaper and more fun to learn this stuff on my own so that I can apply that knowlege elsewhere.
 
If you want to learn to do a simple job its ok. You must remember this, when you study any sort of devleopment you don't go fresh out of the study hall on a gigantic project that people with years of experience would tackle with good effort input. In other words, use code to do simple things, and if something is out of your range of expertise hire somebody capable of handling the work. Don't learn code if you don't have patience, because patience is a trait the best coders have.
 
In terms of practicality, it would be better to learn how to do things yourself. Everything I do on our company website was a result of learning it on my own - although most of the things on the website are fairly simple and not as highly technical as what I see on other websites. If you prefer a more sophisticated website though, you may want to hire someone to lay down the groundwork for you and then eventually, learn how to maintain it and be able to do it on your own moving forward.
 
It depends with how badly you need something done, if you have a deadline to beat then I would say that you hire a pro, but if you have enough time and you arein no hurry, then you can always teach yourself how to do write the various codes. It's a matter of striking a balance in between.
 
I would say - the choice depends. For many smaller issues - like tweaking a few lines of HTML or even the CSS, you can do it yourself even if you are not a geek or a professional. But for a majority of things, you should hire a professional. They know what to do and how to do the things the right way and that many a times does help in getting a secured website and also a faster loading one.
 
Like many people said, I would recommend learning it yourself. In life, you can't rely everything on one specific person, which in this case is the pro. If it's something simple, it must be simple to learn, right? Extra knowledge never hurts, and as a result, you learn something that could be useful in the future.
 
if you're starting learning from zero and you need a site in the near future then hiring someone is a better option.. otherwise if you like learning it then go for it of course!
 
I would at the very least learn HTML and CSS. Even if you later start using shortcuts to get your projects done, such as templates or HTML/CSS generators, it still will save you a lot of time and money when making basic edits. For programming beyond that, such as in Javascript or PHP, I would first seek out free scripts/plugins, then look to commercial scripts/plugins, and make hiring a dedicated programmer a final option - due to the costs.
 
Well, if you are interested in learning to do a project yourself later, or want to have a career in development. Then, it is better to teach yourself, which is going to take time and dedication.
 
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