You IT Professionals & IT staff...

[rdfcpete]

Guys,

What do you usually do if you need to knock up basic intranet interfaces or simple forms on the fly that interact with in-house SQL Server or MySQL data, do you write your own stuff?

... Or do you use websites that build the queries and interface basics for you?

Keen to know what the consensus is, particularly in a Support team environment where a Development team isn't always an on-hand resource. Is it stuff I should know by now, or like I've always believed the simple case that Support and Dev are two very different mind-sets?

Just wondering whether now is the time to start learning things like;
- PHP
- Javascript
- .NET and so on

I've been in Support environments for 10 years and have never wanted to become a developer or programmer as I've always seen it as very niche, with a specific working mind.

If however you're asked to bolt on or create something though, what do you usually do?

Appreciate any input 

Thanks.

[dazza]

I think some php and javascript would be a good thing for you to learn.

[Deako]

A colleague of mine was a whiz in scripting. He used to knock up little interfaces for loads of our support processes. I did Dev at college but unskilled when I got into support.

After 1 year out of support now I doubt I could even get back into that. 

[rdfcpete]

I think some php and javascript would be a good thing for you to learn.

It's a wonderful idea, but Support and Development mindsets are very different. You can't be good at both, I've certainly never met someone who can convincingly do both roles successfully day to day. I've learnt you're either one, or the other - generally speaking.

I read most languages and have done small elements of code support in the past, but fixing it convincingly is a completely different mind set. You either have it, or you don't.

A colleague of mine was a whiz in scripting. He used to knock up little interfaces for loads of our support processes. I did Dev at college but unskilled when I got into support.

After 1 year out of support now I doubt I could even get back into that. 

Yeah I'm in that boat now Luke re. the colleague part and ever going back to it 

What's your POA if you're asking to expose data through a web form or say for sake of argument, design your own reporting interface for a team of users?

Be good to know how you guys handle those sort of projects when raw Dev' is always an option on the table...

 

[dazza]

I recently built a site for a pallet delivery company. I managed to manipulate the forms on their old site and book a delivery for 1p lol.

Form validation is important usually I use javascript so it's quick for the user. But still validate everything again with php before submitting any data.

I'd probably use Google charts or similar to display the report data.

[Rossimac]

It's a wonderful idea, but Support and Development mindsets are very different. You can't be good at both

I work as a developer in a medium sized company (30 devs, 10 support).

All of our internal support software is custom-made by the development team.

I have seen projects that the support staff have worked on in their own time but none that are for our company. 2 of them have Computer Science degrees, but don't have the experience to get a dev job and I think get stuck easily in support.

2 support staff have internally interviewed for a dev job and have moved up - 1 had a CS degree and was crap as a developer and has since moved on to project analysis and the other had a college HND in software and is doing well as a developer.

For me, I would say your best bet is to learn ASP.NET with MVC - this will have all of the features you'll typically need to build a great forms website. Languages needed to know or learn to be effective here are C# for backend stuff, your current database can be modelled in code (so you may not need to know SQL), HTML for frontend (would recommend using Bootstrap as your way of structuring your HTML - MVC 5 uses this and is fantastic for creating quick sites, especially those that won't be customer-facing internal sites).

There is a fantastic and free tutorial series from Pluralsight - which is an excellent resource to learn from

http://www.asp.net/mvc/pluralsight

I am a server-side developer in my job mostly and I have never done any web development before, I used that tutorial series to start with and I made a dummy invoicing website for my uncle in my spare time - this gave me a lot of experience, so would definitely recommend doing side projects in your spare time.

My web site so you can laugh: http://autoproni.co.uk

Any questions just shout.