Can you be employable as a PHP developer after finishing the PHP track?

Hello

Warning TL;DR!

This is really a tricky question to answer as there are a lot of factors to keep in mind and consider. You need to look at what qualifications a potential employer is looking for as well as any type of experience you may have. Speaking as a programmer in both web code and computer code, programming is an art in itself that (while teaching it gives you the knowledge) takes time and experience to prune.There are a lot of styles in programming PHP and any other language. As you probably noticed, no two styles are the same and there are tricks to the trade that only experience will teach you. I've been programming with PHP for nearly over 10 years and other programming languages longer and there are people that have done it longer and there are things that only experience will give you that not even these teachings here will really give you.

Now that I got that out of my system time to answer your question. The teachings taught here for PHP are only the tip of the iceberg. There a lot more to learn and trust me, they (teamtreehouse) will be added more and more in the realm of PHP. The best answer I can give you is "it depends". As corny as that may seem, it's actually an open-ended response. When you are talking about being employable are you talking about getting hired in a company? Getting hired to do a job? Or getting hired as part of a per-job team that gets together to do various contracted jobs? You can also put working for yourself as employable as well.

I'm guessing you are talking about getting hired in a company as a back-end developer. Depending (there's that word again) on what type of jobs they are doing, they may hire someone that has the learning in the realm of PHP. Difficult jobs will require a more skilled individual that has experience coding in PHP. Try to use what you learned here and build an application (no matter how big or small). Using the applications learned here will help a little but keep in mind the style of code is that of a teamtreehouse teacher and not yourself (unless you modified it to your liking). Potential employers are looking for jobs that you have done yourself so they can look at your code to see what type of programmer you are.

If you want my opinion, if you are trying to get a job as a PHP developer based on only learning what you have done here I am truthfully going to say no. You need to take what you have learned here and put that into a project you can make yourself: a log in system, a whole website in only PHP, a PHP application, etc. Once you have done that you have something built by you that you can bring to the table when you are searching for a job.

Here's a little fun fact for you: the programming world (game programming for example) is one of if not the only realm where you can get a very high-paid position in a corporation without having to really graduate high school or college. Now I might get people who disagree with me but what potential employers are looking for are skilled programmers that know what they are doing and can produce quality work. There are lead designers in gaming companies that got hired because they were developing mods and addons to games in their parent's basement and the companies saw their talent. Programming isn't any different.

I know this is TL;DR but I wanted to give you my two cents (actually about two-thousand cents :D ). Learning everything here might not get you hired right away, but is a start in the right direction and a catalyst for things to come. Hope this all gives you what you are looking for.

Cheers!