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Joy Gems Newsletter

Don't Call Them Coders

By Bud Kraus
bud@joyofcode.com
Joy Of Code
Creator And Instructor

v4 i8
Originally Published: May 15, 2008

This is an industry thing that really bugs me. We need a job description upgrade for the people who do the work of taking an idea and turning it into a web page.

We don't have garbage men anymore. We have sanitation workers. Secretaries no longer exist. We have Administrative Assistants (and that's debatable). So why do we have "coders?" Seems very demeaning.

In the world of web design, we have people known as coders - the guys and gals who possess the valued skills of taking an idea and turning it into a web page using a mixture of (X)HTML, CSS, imagery and, maybe a dash of javascript.

Titles matter and the word "coder" just doesn't seem to give what they do its proper respect. Coder seems diminutive, even derisive, to me. The word registers like fingernails on a chalk board. YIKES!!

Ask me what should the craft of converting an image into a web page be called? How about web page crafters? How about codeographers? All I know is that I hate the term "coder" and this is my call to Joy Gems Readers not to call them "coders."

I was heartened recently when my friend Lance (he's a Joy Gems Reader too), sent me the article, Hand Coding HTML Is Still in Vogue by Glenn Fleishman. Check this out. The New York Times today is hand coding!!

Khoi Vinh, design director at The New York Times, noted in a recent reader Q&A segment on the Web site, "It's our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to 'hand code' everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results."

Thank you, Mr. Vinh. I could not have said it better myself. (Of course he's referring, no doubt, to the templates built and used for the New York Times site as the content you see on their pages is dynamically pulled together from many databases.)

The world's top web designers code by hand. Should we call them "coders?" I don't think so.

Coders Of The World Unite!! You Have Nothing To L