
Web Developers Are Stupid - diptanu
http://mcarthurgfx.com/blog/article/web-developers-are-stupid
======
sofal
Quick summary: Web developers are not stupid.

~~~
potatolicious
Quick summary of Michael Braude's blog (the post that article is rebutting):
web developers just write HTML/CSS all day, I know nothing about web
development on a production scale. I have made the smug assumption that a web
startup does about the same thing as Joe's Home Page hosted by Tripod.

I actually take great offense to the original blog post that is referenced. I
work at the _other_ big company across the lake from MS (hint: it sells stuff
online), and I dare say the work that I've done here is miles more advanced
and demanding than anything I've ever done for a desktop app.

And it certainly includes a deep comprehension of compilers, concurrency (oh
boy do I ever), inheritance, etc etc.

This guy is just entirely clueless about what it takes to build a production
website. His notion of web development is about as accurate as me claiming
desktop apps are just drag-dropping controls onto a form in VB.

------
Barnabas
"We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the
pale of our list of sacred things and yet, with strange inconsistency, we are
shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy for
us." -- Mark Twain

~~~
cema
Somehow I read it as "we despise all references and all objects of
reference..." and had to do a double-take. :-)

------
seldo
The guys who carved Petra out of a mountain are arguably better at masonry
that the guys who build houses by piling bricks on top of each other, but
who's better at making houses?

~~~
potatolicious
Not a good analogy ;) Petra has stood the test of time for centuries, how long
do you think your average brick house will stay standing?

~~~
nopassrecover
Exactly, he pointed out the question isn't about Masonry skill but rather
application. Having said that I disagree with his sentiment (web development
isn't just building average brick houses).

------
gexla
Easy: Majority of the code being written day to day whether it's for the
desktop, the web or some other device.

Hard: Running a successful business on the easy part.

I don't care what sort of software you are writing. I'm a business owner. I'm
a web developer but my real business is dealing with people, not machines.

------
plainspace
How are we defining "web developer" here?

This is from our friends at Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_developer>

_A web developer is a software developer or software engineer who is
specifically engaged in the development of World Wide Web applications, or
distributed network applications that are run over the HTTP protocol from a
web server to a web browser._

and

 _Modern web applications often contain three or more tiers, and depending on
the size of the team a developer works on, he or she may specialize in one or
more of these tiers - or may take a more interdisciplinary role. For example,
in a two person team, one developer may focus on the technologies sent to the
client such as HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and on the server-side frameworks (such
as Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, .NET) used to deliver content and scripts to
the client. Meanwhile the other developer might focus on the interaction
between server-side frameworks, the web server, and a database system.
Further, depending on the size of their organization, the aforementioned
developers might work closely with a web designer, web producer, project
manager, software architect, or database administrator - or they may be
responsible for such tasks as web design, project management, and database
administration themselves._

------
pbhjpbhj
There seems to be a bit of a trend for "$groupOfPeople are stupid" posts -
presumably it's just an attempt to be inflammatory to get links and
visibility.

People who post "$gOP are stupid" posts are stupid. Read about it on my blog
...

------
kyochan
I am stupid, but that just means you're too smart to do my job.

------
al3x
If I could downvote this, I would.

------
noodle
i agree with the point of the article (i.e., web developers are not stupid)

i'd say that the real issue is that there are lots of good web developers, and
they are all are under wraps by big companies, doing the things that they like
for a big salary. the bad ones need work, so they're very prolific with their
presence and marketing.

the most visible web developers are stupid.

~~~
dasil003
The _real_ issue is that the original author is having a sour grapes fit over
the fact that most development is moving the web, and he's stuck in
yesterday's paradigm dutifully churning out his MS desktop schlock while guys
without a college education are getting hired to work on highly visible and
popular websites and applications.

Of course there are a bunch of talentless hacks out there calling themselves
web developers, but that's just a function of the size of the market and the
cluelessness of hiring managers.

If the original author was _half_ as smart as he thinks he is, he would know
better than to associate intelligence with one technical field or another.

~~~
sho
_"guys without a college education are getting hired"_

While I agree wholeheartedly with the thrust of your comment, I have to say -
I think the age of the college degree is in terminal decline, and nowhere is
this more evident than on the cutting edge of IT.

I don't think we're quite there yet that we can declare the college degree to
be irrelevant but we're close. In my company it's a "that's nice" thing. Like
being a boy scout. Very good for character. Now, onto your demonstrating your
ability, and showing you can fit in, which is all we actually care about.

If a school-leaver who wanted to be a programmer asked me today whether he
should go to college, I would have difficulty answering him/her. I am leaning
towards "don't bother". And FWIW, I went to college.

~~~
dasil003
Absolutely true. I don't think a college degree has any correlation to
programming skill at all. I completed an MIT-based CS curriculum with all
graduate-level classes my senior year. Had I not also been working full time
as a web developer, and dabbling in the web since 1993, my degree would have
made me virtually unhirable as a web developer.

On the other hand, the CS theory gives a very solid theoretical base that
makes me a better programmer in all aspects of what I do. None of this stuff
is exclusively available in a CS degree, all this information is available for
free online _if you know where to look_. Most decent practitioners will pick
up a lot of this stuff intuitively without formal training, but not with the
same breadth or formality.

The stuff I did in my CS degree, such as optimizing binary code, writing a
(subset of) Java compiler from scratch, and writing radiosity and monte carlo
3d renderers is demonstrative of a certain practical ability to deal with
complex subjects that I consider valuable to all types of programmers.
Therefore I think a CS degree can continue to stay very relevant, as long as
they stick with theoretical CS and don't turn programs into Java and C# farms.

That said, the skills to succeed in a theoretical CS program do not
necessarily translate into the ability to get things done in a real world
environment, and it would also be a mistake to use it as some sort of litmus
test since a college environment is not for everyone.

