Feeling a bit discouraged :/

[zawmbee]

Hi guys, I'm currently 16 and going through my 4th month of learning web development: HTML 5 and CSS 3. I've always loved web development and I'm a great web designer (and very modest, obviously). My only query and concern is do you think it's worth me learning further development and programming skills? I love IT, I aspire to be like Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook; Matthew Inman, the inventor of theoatmeal; and Christopher Poole, the inventor of 4chan. I want to take a Computer Science course in University (I'm doing GCSEs now, so it's a long way to go) and hopefully advance my knowledge intro professionalism. I have a few website ideas in mind, mainly a personal site where I can showcase my webcomics, artwork, music and articles with a couple of friends of mine. And a music portal I wanted to start. These are my only intentions for learning web development so far -- there will be more. Do you all think this is a skill worth learning? Is there a bright future with dedication towards these languages (I want to learn Java, Javascript, C, MySQL, and PHP in the future). I have these concerns because there are easier options, such as wordpress, comicpress and drulap; but I don't feel comfortable using any of these; I prefer to do it myself and learn these skills. Will they be useful in landing me a job?

Advice would be appreciated, lads. Cheers for reading (:

[Xandor]

Tools like Dreamweaver or WordPress are great things to familiarize yourself with. They can do wonderful things but I will tell you that no professional web developer uses SOLELY these tools. If you want to make nice professional web pages, learning these things is almost a must. But keep an open mind on language choice for server-side scripting (C, PHP, etc) for sure. I have seen schools tell people that they need to focus on one thing and that this is the standard and this is what you need to be successful. This simply is not true (not saying don't listen to your teachers, they have their job for a reason, just stay open minded). The technology world is ever-changing along with it's choices and resources available to you. Do lots of research, constantly.

Many things can have an affect on what would work best for your project, such as personal preferences, goal wanting to achieve, what your server allows, and many more. Some languages I might suggest looking into Ruby or Python. These are regular programming languages such as C. They're not specifically intended for web development but work wonders for it. You just have to make sure your server allows it. If your server doesn't support the language you're using, obviously it won't work.

I hope I have answered your questions/concerns. Scripting and coding is definitely something worth getting into. It's a fun, non-repetitive field to get into, I know I have thoroughly enjoyed making it a large portion of my life. And there will always be a demand for it. Just remember not to limit yourself.