<p>Does anyone think it's ridiculous for a computer science student who is just half way through his web development course to apply for an internship as a web developer?</p>
<p>Not really. Its not a rocket science, and you’ll do a lot of learning on the job. I think you can handle it!</p>
<p>Web development is pretty easy/hacky. You probably don’t need any formal training for most web development work… and they’ll probably start you off slow, so don’t worry.</p>
<p>One of the things that bothered me was that the internship job description said that they prefer at least 5 years of enterprise experience… to me, the two didn’t go together: unpaid internship & 5 years of experience…</p>
<p>I will take a step back and claim that there are low level and high level web development. But after all, you still need the right skill. Building HTML is not all that simple. Companies want qualified interns that can do work immediately. They don’t need to be expert in everything, but solid skill is preferable. </p>
<p>Web designer is usually the low level job, and it requires one to use various image processing software such as Photoshop, Firework. There are two kinds of web developers too. The low and high. If your company does simple website that you don’t need to know a lot of stuff. But if you are doing enterprise kind website, you need a good understanding of database and models (as well as the framework itself). </p>
<p>If you use Spring, then you need Java. If you use Django, Pylons, you need to know Python. If you use Wt, then you need C++.</p>
<p>===
Yeah. Unpaid and 5 years? Ha. Business people are taking advantage of this poor economy. If you are unemployed and you still want to increase your experience? Work for them.</p>
<p>Minimally you should be very comfortable with HTML+CSS and Javascript. Depending on your role, you may or may not need to use them.</p>
<p>My web development class is going over HTML+CSS+Javascript. I guess I need to pack some other skills under my belt…</p>
<p>Lots of web designers go free lance for quite a while to build up their portfolio before moving into the corporate scene. But I’m a little biased since I only know others from the freelance scene. If you do get internship opportunities however, just apply for them regardless, the only difference between a candidate with 5 years of experience and one with only one year is how fast they think they can complete a project. (Senior devs tends to overestimate while 1st years tend to be too unrealistic)</p>