How exactly do you get work as a developer?

[PsychoRebellious]

Being somebody having no certification, let alone one from a credible institute, it is almost as if there is no hope where with the path I have chosen. To start with, C++ is my main/first language. Till now, I have only played around with the standard library only( I switched to web languages then). I never expected to have a living with something like C++ anyway, even the dream of being a game developer was never accomplished and may never be (Having only highschool education, I don't really know a lot of mathematics) . I realized there were more jobs of Android then there were of these other general purpose languages, and so I learned JAVA and learned the android development kit(not really, played around with it).
Anyway, coming back to web languages, I got myself learning PHP and jQuery(I already knew some front end working), and started learning photoshop. Through out this process, have I realized that I only have bits and bits of many skills but I am not really good with any of them.
Now, I wonder if I'll ever be able to earn something as a developer. Concentrating on core/raw PHP all the time, everywhere I see the online jobs are for DRUPAL/WORDPRESS/JOOMLA developers, and that is so boring(Anybody who has worked with a CMS can tell you that). I've been trying to set up a portfolio as a web developer and I have no idea what to fill it with.
Past work: Some dumb social engineering website, photo gallery, simple CMS(no plugin support or anything)
I need to know how you other developers(those without a formal education) have worked their way through. I am really getting tired of working as a content writer( and some shit receptionist job that I do)

[Schalla]

Pro Hint: Social Engineering Websites are not the best thing to show a potential employee.

You ever did some OpenSource projects or supported existent ones? That is usually a good thing to
show, since they can track what you have done and how you commuinicated with the maintainers etc.

Otherwise from just what I have seen in the board, your web development skills are not really yet that high
to live from it. That's no offense, but you were lacking quite some basic knowledge and followed a lot of
bad practice principles.

Otherwise, look for smaller jobs on the web and built up some customer relations. In my country that's not really
expensive and it gives you some great experience. But please, first try to learn a bit more about best practice principles
in Web Development.

[PsychoRebellious]

Pro Hint: Social Engineering Websites are not the best thing to show a potential employee.

You ever did some OpenSource projects or supported existent ones? That is usually a good thing to
show, since they can track what you have done and how you commuinicated with the maintainers etc.

Otherwise from just what I have seen in the board, your web development skills are not really yet that high
to live from it. That's no offense, but you were lacking quite some basic knowledge and followed a lot of
bad practice principles.

Otherwise, look for smaller jobs on the web and built up some customer relations. In my country that's not really
expensive and it gives you some great experience. But please, first try to learn a bit more about best practice principles
in Web Development.

Thank you, and yes I agree to that. But even in these skills, I can do almost all type of things, and so I am wondering what kind of project should I look forward to in order to improve my skills as a developer :/

[Schalla]

Since you lack knowledge and skill, you wouldn't be a big help in OS projects yet, don't take that personal. So I woulld recommend you start with a project you are interested in. Something that would help your life and your friends, that can be an Mobile App with Web Tech (See later Link Collection), a Web System or anything else. Just try to build things which would help you and other people.

When you are done, take a look how you have done it, which problems did you face and did you solve them. In both cases, check out how other people have solved them or how to even avoid these issues completely. Take a look at the PSR Style Recommendation for PHP, LESS for CSS and especially read basic tutorials on MVC and jQuery.

You just lack knowledge in terms on how to solve things, so you ideally should start off with reading style guides on HTML, CSS and jQuery. If you want to, you can include things like LESS into the list of "What to learn?". Don't read only one guide, read multiple ones all over the net and try to combine them to something where you can say "Hey, that's useful" and apply it to your project.

Some things which you might find useful in your future:

http://blog.codinghorror.com/understanding-model-view-controller/
http://cssguidelin.es/
http://lesscss.org/
http://getbootstrap.com/
http://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-1/
https://angularjs.org/

I used most of these resources and I guess you might find some of these useful too.

[Pak_Track]

Meh, I too, am wondering about the lack of IT related jobs here in Pakistan. [emoji14]