Thread: DBA vs Web Dev
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Old 03-23-2010, 12:29 PM   #7
photon
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Originally Posted by FanIn80 View Post
Yeah, I guess they are completely different things. I'm a bit concerned by the wirehead bit though. I'm not really much for the nerd stuff... On the other side, though, I really hate layout work.
Most DBAs I know are really geeky about it, not that they can't be normal people with a real life and kids and a dog or something (one DBA I know is pretty cool), but an inordinate # of them I know are the stereotypical open source nerds with the full-on beard, anti-social curmudgeons, etc..

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Originally Posted by FanIn80 View Post
- There's probably 1000 web guys for every DB guy.
Which means fewer jobs available as well, so you have to be good at it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by FanIn80 View Post
- DB guy doesn't have to put up with a project manager or QA guy telling him to change the colour of a button five times... or other brilliant things like reversing the order of the OK/Cancel buttons on every form.
This is why I like server side programming and hate web programming, one of the reasons anyway.

On the other hand you will have developers renaming their columns, changing their schemas as apps change at a whim, ignoring your normalization/denormalization, and mostly writing applications with no consideration at all for the underlying data structure.

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Originally Posted by FanIn80 View Post
- DB guy doesn't have to constantly explain his work to people who have no hope of ever understanding it.
I think it's worse for a DBA cause it's harder to understand!

Quote:
Originally Posted by FanIn80 View Post
- I like data. I like the SQL language (simple, elegant, powerful). I like building reports etc.
- I like programming. I especially like the idea of programming for the web.
- I hate layout and design. I'm not a graphic artist, and I don't want to be. I spend more time screwing around with tables and layers...
There are web programmers who deal less with the front end stuff, who worry more about the business logic and how to get the data to the page so the designer can decide where to put it and such, so that might be a place to focus too, and likely either path would get you to that point.. you'd just have to work outwards from the DBA path or work inwards from the web-dev path (I assume the web dev path is heavily directed towards the visual stuff).
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