If you are studying in the field of Information Technology in college, you might get confused when choosing a career option.
This is especially the case when the two job roles have nearly identical career growth curves, great opportunities for advancement, and almost the same salaries.
This happens when you think of the two most popular fields in IT – data science vs. web development.
Data science and web development are used in almost every organization across every industry, including banking and finance, media and entertainment, logistics, manufacturing, retail, eCommerce, healthcare, transport, oil and gas, and energy.
This is why there is a massive demand for web developers and data scientists in companies of all sizes across the globe.
While many professionals look for a Data Science Bootcamp, a majority of IT professionals also wish to learn web development. The demand for both job roles is increasing exponentially.
Data science is a relatively new career path, while web development has been here for over the past three decades.
Today we will explore the two fields, and this blog will help you on deciding your career path.
What is a Web Developer?
A web developer, also called a full-stack developer, is an IT professional who works on both the front end (the client side), and the back end (server-side), and integrates them with a database application to come up with a web application.
To design the aesthetics (something that is visible to the client) of a web application, you use front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, NPM, etc.
To work on the back end (something that works behind the scenes of an application), you typically use back-end technologies such as Python programming, Java, C++, C#, Git version control system, etc.
So, a web developer creates websites that are easy to navigate and visually appealing and also makes sure that the website is high in performance and capacity.
The skills required for a web developer include:
- HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language)
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
- HTTP (HyperText Transmit Protocol) and REST (REpresentational State Transfer Protocol)
- Web Architecture
- Git and GitHub
- JavaScript
- Database storage
- Basic design skills
- Back-end programming languages including Java, Python, C++, etc.
What is a Data Scientist?
Data science is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses processes used in dealing with massive volumes of data, all this to extract meaningful insights, identify unseen patterns, to help businesses in making informed decisions.
Data science basically involves machine learning algorithms to develop predictive models. The processes involved in the data science lifecycle include:
- Data collection (data entry, signal reception, data extraction, and data acquisition)
- Maintaining (data cleansing, data warehousing, data processing, and data architecture)
- Processing the data that include clustering and classification, data mining, data modeling, and data summarization
- The analysis includes predictive, exploratory, and confirmatory analysis, text mining, regression, qualitative analysis, and text mining
- Communicating includes data visualization, data reporting, decision making, and business intelligence
Following are the skills required for a Data Scientist:
- Machine learning
- Statistics
- Data Modeling
- Programming languages (Python, R, Perl, etc)
- Databases
Data Scientist vs Web Developer: The Difference
Data Scientist | Web Developer |
The field of data science includes the usage of statistics, technology, and algorithm to perform the analysis of data to help businesses in making informed decisions | It is the process of creating websites for internet or intranet which is a public platform |
Languages used in data science includes Python, Java, C, C++, R, SQL, etc | Languages used in web development include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Photoshop, Python, Ruby |
Coding is used in many processes | Coding is used in the entire process |
Relies heavily on statistcis | Hardly uses any statistical method |
Works on both structured and unstructured data | Doesn’t work on data |
Future trends include Machine learning and artificial intelligence | Future trends include eCommerce and eLearning |
Require high availability of data and a set of specialized skills to perform analysis and build predictive models | Requires direct connection with customers to understand requirements and use technical skills to develop the applications |
Data Science Vs Web Development: Career Prospects
As per a report by LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs, the annual growth rate of web developers is found to be around 35%, and that of the data scientist is around 37%.
The last three years have seen tremendous growth for data scientists with the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning in almost all aspects of IT.
With the increasing adoption of these technologies in almost every industry, the demand for data scientists continues to bolster.
A career in web development is also a great option since web developers are experts in their domain and can deal with any kind of issues arising in the product development lifecycle.
Also, the best part of being a web developer is that you can do freelancing projects instead of doing a whole-day job.
With data science in your talent arena, you can become:
- Data Scientist
- Senior Data Scientist
- Senior Data Analyst
- DataOps Engineer
- Machine Learning Engineer
- Data Systems Developer
- Data Systems Analyst
- Business Intelligence Developer
With Web Development in your talent arena, you can become:
- Full-Stack Developer
- Front-end Developer
- Back-end Developer
- iOS Developer
- UI Developer
- UX Developer
- Database Analyst
- DevOps Engineer
- Data Engineer
- Technical Product Manager
Data Science vs. Web Development: Salary Prospects
It is notable that both job roles offer huge salaries. Since the salaries vary with different factors such as location, company, expertise, certifications, qualifications, and experience, the same goes for both job roles.
In India, the salary of a Data Scientist ranges from INR 4.5 Lakhs to INR 25.2 Lakhs, with an average annual being INR 10.6 Lakhs.
In India, the salary of a web developer ranges from INR 1.2 lakhs to INR 7.6 lakhs, with an average annual salary being INR 3.1 lakhs.
Data Science Vs. Web Development: Which is Better?
As we have seen in this article, both job roles offer a plethora of opportunities to IT professionals.
It is difficult to state which field is better when it comes to choosing what to study in college.
It’s all about your interest; if you like coding, switch to web development, and if you like to play with numbers and data, go with data science.
It is observed that data science has great salaries to offer than web developers, but in the end, both job roles offer lucrative careers.