You're right but I think we're talking about two different things. I consider myself a generalist doing both design and programming but I don't have any formal

You're right but I think we're talking about two different things. I consider myself a generalist doing both design and programming but I don't have any formal training in the art of design. So yeah, it will seem foreign to me when someone starts speaking about white space, color theory, and all that. What I'm talking about is the fact that anyone with little effort at all can code some HTML and CSS because they're far more forgiving. The results may come out like crap but most people (myself included) don't know good design anyway and so they end up calling themselves web designers based on some simple HTML tutorial. Getting a programming language to print out text is one thing but ask someone to do something useful. Nobody picks up a book on Ruby and builds a blog on the first try. Even the 20 minute blog tutorial is too high a barrier to entry for people without programming experience. "Design" languages like HTML and CSS are more about memorization. Memorize the tags and syntax and you can start building and publishing crap in a few days. Programming is different. Not only do you have to memorize the syntax but you also have to apply some logic to it as well. Programming is about problem solving whereas design is about describing output. Even the examples you'll find in books don't help unless you're trying to build the exact thing as the examples otherwise you have to actually understand the underlying concepts to get a program that suits your specific needs. Neither one is easier than the other, I will not say that. First off, it's far easier for the unqualified to call the,slaves designers than programmer. But just because it's easier to enter the design realm doesn't make it easy. Once you have a grasp of both programming and design you'll find out that both are quite complex and interconnected. Those "designers" that haven't discovered that yet are the ones I'm talking about and they're the ones I'm basing my premise of design having a lower barrier to entry on.