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In the early days of the web, web designer used to earn as much as £800 per day (~$1200 at the time) for handcrafting HTML in vi or Notepad, doing a bit of imag

In the early days of the web, web designer used to earn as much as £800 per day (~$1200 at the time) for handcrafting HTML in vi or Notepad, doing a bit of image manipulation in Paint Shop Pro. Then Hotmetal Pro came along and we all had up learn the Dark Art of CGI scripting to maintain the daily rates. Then Cold Fusion took over, et cetera, et cetera. Skills are constantly rendered redundant by technology and/or commoditised because they get taught in mainstream education. You have to keep upgrading your skills.

stray 11y ago
I'm pretty sure there are people with driving licenses who weren't born the last time I heard HoTMetaL mentioned.
- jackgavigan 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure there are people with children who weren't born the last time I heard HoTmEtAl mentioned...
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
But whilst a single wainwright could perhaps make a decent enough waggon a single individual can't produce a car. On the web the expectation has grown, the tech has matured, the simplest offerings now are beyond what can be efficiently created by a solo artisan. Yes you have to keep upgrading you skills but the skillset has grown - for me - so much that I can no longer be a full stack web dev without spending all my time just on keeping up with changes. One used to just need to know LAMP, but now there's nginx, postgres, ruby, ..., two main CSS preprocessors, several js frameworks, bootstrap, WordPress, ..., source management, coding standards, more browsers, more platforms, more focus on accessibility, more legal requirements, more payment gateways, more security issues, ..., social media interactions, expectations of greater integration with other communication platforms, ... There might still be a few wainwrights around the world but now there are while teams just to design the surface interface for the wheels. This is what web design is going.
cableshaft 11y ago
Damn, I regret not knowing this when I was high school. I was putting together HTML websites for companies in the mid 90's for $50 and a free video game. The game wasn't even that great (Warbirds). I was still learning at the time, but if I realized so much money was already on the table at that time I probably would have worked harder at it. I'm sure even back then I was better at HTML than quite a few companies out there. It was fun for me and I was recreating my personal site with a totally different look and feel on a yearly basis back then.

stray 11y ago

I'm pretty sure there are people with driving licenses who weren't born the last time I heard HoTMetaL mentioned.

jackgavigan 11y ago
I'm pretty sure there are people with children who weren't born the last time I heard HoTmEtAl mentioned...

pbhjpbhj 11y ago

But whilst a single wainwright could perhaps make a decent enough waggon a single individual can't produce a car. On the web the expectation has grown, the tech has matured, the simplest offerings now are beyond what can be efficiently created by a solo artisan. Yes you have to keep upgrading you skills but the skillset has grown - for me - so much that I can no longer be a full stack web dev without spending all my time just on keeping up with changes. One used to just need to know LAMP, but now there's nginx, postgres, ruby, ..., two main CSS preprocessors, several js frameworks, bootstrap, WordPress, ..., source management, coding standards, more browsers, more platforms, more focus on accessibility, more legal requirements, more payment gateways, more security issues, ..., social media interactions, expectations of greater integration with other communication platforms, ... There might still be a few wainwrights around the world but now there are while teams just to design the surface interface for the wheels. This is what web design is going.

cableshaft 11y ago

Damn, I regret not knowing this when I was high school. I was putting together HTML websites for companies in the mid 90's for $50 and a free video game. The game wasn't even that great (Warbirds). I was still learning at the time, but if I realized so much money was already on the table at that time I probably would have worked harder at it. I'm sure even back then I was better at HTML than quite a few companies out there. It was fun for me and I was recreating my personal site with a totally different look and feel on a yearly basis back then.