Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Value of Website Design Tools vs. Hand Coding?
An anonymous reader writes "I am pretty computer literate, and have a son who is extremely computer savvy. He taught himself C#, Javascript, built his own desktop with his Christmas and birthday money two years ago and is an avid reader of stackoverflow, reddit and many forums. He recently was asked to design a website for an architect, and likes to code by hand using Notepad++ and the Chrome developer tools. He uses CSS and Javascript libraries, but is convinced that all visual editors (Dreamweaver, Expression Web and so on) are only for extreme beginners and create non responsive, non compliant sites. I argue with him that while handcoding abilities are essential and great there is a value in knowing and using WYSIWYG editors. We agreed that having slashdot weigh in would be useful — comments appreciated on either the approach or good tools he can and should use."
Imagine trying to program the software you use in machine code, without any tools to aid? Maybe back in the early days, it was done this way, but today everyone uses the necessary tools if you want your software / website to get noticed. Unless your website is very basic, in which case it will probably never get noticed.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Hand Coding in HTML today is stupid. My time is worth more to me than .01 second difference in load times. I stopped hand coding sites about 12 years ago, and haven't looked back since. I can still tweak HTML if needed. Good to know, just above useless otherwise.
The Ask Question is stupid, because it is an XOR problem, when the true answer lies outside the framework of his question. IF his son is that talented, have him build a CMS in whatever language, that teaches more than HTML Coding and Programming. That way, it teaches him about Content, Structure and Layout as separate entities in site design, rather than thinking about it as one big ugly mess.
Using a CMS, frees me up to do more useful things like "not re-inventing the wheel" for the four-thousandth time.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.