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(Describer) Beside four different-size different-color circles connected by lines, title: Career Connections.

(Describer) Title: Web Developer

My name is Geoffrey Stump. I'm a front-end developer at Real Art. We're a full-service creative agency. Whether you need normal print, web stuff, or something that no one's done before, cool, talk to us. Our typical day depends on the project. Our producers, project managers, and account executives bring the work in and work with the design team and front-end developer team to cultivate the project. We're the bridge between the design and the final product of code.

(Describer) Dustin Clinard:

(man) There are different web developers-- front-end guys and back-end guys. Front-end guys are mostly responsible for generating the HTML, CSS, everything you see. And back-end guys use programming languages to talk to databases, store data, do any of the functional tasks required for that Web site. As a web developer at Real Art, I'm in charge of taking designs that designers give me and making them interactive and intuitive,

(Describer) Shelby White:

so users know how to use the Web site without instructions and click on the buttons and scroll the pages. Sometimes I have my own creative freedom to do things. I started out as a web developer doing back-end stuff. I still code here and there, but mostly I lead a team of talented people. My daily responsibilities are making sure that my programmers don't compromise the user experience for the sake of making the code faster or more efficient. There's always a more efficient way, but if that user experience isn't perfect, it doesn't matter how fast your code runs.

(Describer) Clinard talks with a colleague at his desk.

You're worried about the wait it'll put on the Redis server? No. It was written in C, so it's fast.

(Clinard) You need to think logically. You have to see the problem from different perspectives. You have to be able to adapt to all the changes that you didn't see coming and the bugs that you never knew could possibly exist in your code.

(Describer) Stump:

If you're organized, everything goes smoother. If you're dedicated and want to do good work, you'll find a way to do good work. I'll sit for hours trying to figure out, "Why isn't this working?" At Real Art, I don't need to be the only one that can do stuff. We're very team-oriented.

(White) Teamwork is super important.

(Describer) White:

On a daily basis, I'm working with other people, from project managers to other developers to the designer. So learning teamwork skills early on and improving upon them as years go by is super important.

(Describer) She and Stump talk as she works at her computer and he watches.

Code it when it's down. I'll figure out how to attach an event to that. Cool.

(White) I love Adobe Creative Suite. I use Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I think having the right tools definitely helps you. I personally use Sublime Text. It's a text editor that I can open and start typing code. Code editors and design software are the main software that we use.

(Clinard) We generally do our development on Macs.

(Describer) Clinard:

We play around with hardware like Arduinos, Raspberry Pi's, Oculus Rifts, Kinect-- If there is a developer version of it, we have it. We get it before the consumer version's released, giving us time to make something cool.

(Describer) White:

I grew up when the Internet first started becoming what the Internet is today. I was a fan of Myspace. I would build these layouts for Myspace, and people would download the designs. Once I figured out that that was a career you could have, I said, "I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life." My favorite subjects in high school were art classes I took. I have an associate's degree of applied business in advertising art. A web developer doesn't need a degree. But I do think that the experience of college is what'll help you become the best at what you can be.

(Describer) Stump:

(Stump) I played music growing up. I figured I'll play in a band forever. So I didn't apply to colleges. Then I took a computer literacy class, and that's where I first learned Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver. I was learning raw HTML code, some raw CSS code, and JavaScript. And it was, "I can create something from nothing." I have an associate's degree in applied business of graphic design and advertising. When you get in the industry, you learn quickly that college was easy. I think I learned more in six months on the job than I did in two years in college.

(Describer) Clinard:

Many people can see things and know if what they're looking at is good, bad, right, wrong. I don't have that. I did poorly in school. Artists and graphic designers see the world a little differently than I do. But playing with numbers and figuring out logic puzzles is a lot easier for me. I got an associate's degree in software engineering. Some of the best programmers I've met don't have college degrees. They want to do something great, and they want to figure it out. There's no shortage on the Internet of places to go to learn things for free. People that do that excel. With development, there's always more you can learn. There's a fast learning curve of what's coming out next. What I'm coding today will be obsolete in two years. I need to, as a developer, keep up.

(White) I grew up hating math.

(Describer) White:

The fact that I'm in a job focused on numbers daily is shocking to me. But there's something about writing code with all the numbers. There's so many different ways to do things, but when you see it, and it works, it's such an awesome feeling. I love my job because I get to work with talented people, I solve different problems, and every day's different. It's something where if you really, really love it, you don't work. I don't feel like I'm working. I feel I'm creating and get to do stuff. I love my job because I can show people what I do, and they can appreciate what I do. When they see the code, a thousand lines of gibberish to them, it's nice to know you're doing something that not everybody can pick up and do.

Funding to purchase and make this educational production

(Describer) Titles: For more information, visit OhioMeansJobs.com. CET, Think TV, Public Media Connect Copyright 2015 Funding to purchase and make this educational program accessible was provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Contact the Department of Education by telephone at 1-800-USA-LEARN, or online at www.ed.gov.

accessible was provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

PH:1-800-USA-LEARN (V) or WEB: www.ed.gov.

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