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I remember in the very first class I ever took on Web Design the teacher spent an entire semester teaching "first principles" of HTML, CSS and JavaScript by wri

I remember in the very first class I ever took on Web Design the teacher spent an entire semester teaching "first principles" of HTML, CSS and JavaScript by writing it in Notepad. It was only then did she introduce us to the glory that was Adobe Dreamweaver, which (obviously) increased our productivity tenfold.

girvo 10mo ago
I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00’s! My first PHP scripts and games were written using nothing more than Notepad too funnily enough
- panzi 10mo ago
  Back in the early 00s I brought gvim.exe on a floppy disk to school because I refused to write XSLT, HTML, CSS, etc without auto-indent or syntax highlighting.
frankest 10mo ago
DreamWeaver absolutely destroyed the code with all kinds of tags and unnecessary stuff. Especially if you used the visual editor. It was fun for brainstorming but plain notepad with clean understandable code was far far better (and with the browser compatibility issues the only option if you were going to production).
- BobbyTables2 10mo ago
  MS FrontPage also went out of its way to do the same.
  - pram 10mo ago
    It’s funny this came up, because it was kinda similar to the whole “AI frauds” thing these days. I don’t particularly remember why, but “hand writing” fancy HTML and CSS used to be a flex in some circles in the 90s. A bunch of junk and stuff like fixed positioning in the source was the telltale sign they “cheated” with FrontPage or Dreamweaver lol
    - supriyo-biswas 10mo ago
      My only gripe was that they tended to generate gobs of “unsemantic” HTML. You resized a table and expect it to be based on viewport width? No! It’s hardcoded “width: X px” to whatever your size the viewport was set to.
  - _joel 10mo ago
    It might have been pretty horrible but I hold Frontpage 97 with fond memories, it started my IT career, although not for HTML reasons. The _vti_cnf dir left /etc/passwd downloadable, so I grabbed it from my school website. One Jack the Ripper later and the password was found. I told the teacher resposible for the IT it was insecure and that ended up getting me some work experience. Ended up working the summer (waiting for my GCSE results) for ICL which immeasurably helped me when it was time to properly start working. Did think about defacing, often wonder that things could have turned out very much differently!
- christophilus 10mo ago
  After 25 or so years doing this, I think there are two kinds of developers: craftsmen and practical “does it get the job done” types. I’m the former. The latter seem to be what makes the world go round.
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    It takes both.
  - ghurtado 10mo ago
    If you've been doing it for that long (about as long as I have), then surely you remember all the times you had to clean up after the "git 'er done" types. I'm not saying they don't have their place, but without us they would still be making the world go round. Only backwards.
    - thebruce87m 10mo ago
      > all the times you had to clean up after the "git 'er done" types It’s lovely to have the time to do that. This time comes once the other type of engineer has shipped the product and turned the money flow on. Both types have their place.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
    - bigfatkitten 10mo ago
      I work in digital forensics and incident response. The “git ‘er done” software engineers have paid my mortgage and are putting my kids through private schooling.
    - ambicapter 10mo ago
      Well, going round in a circle does project to going forwards then backwards in a line :)
  - KronisLV 10mo ago
- chrisweekly 10mo ago
  The HTML generated by Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG mode might not have been ideal, but it was far superior to the mess produced by MS Front Page. With Dreamweave, it was at least possible to use it as a starting point.
- msephton 10mo ago
  Judicious and careful use of Dreamweaver (its visual editor and properties bar) enabled me to write exactly the code I wanted. I used Dreamweaver foot table layouts and Home Site (later Top Style) for broader code edits. At that time I was famous with the company for being able to make any layout. Good times!
ghurtado 10mo ago
> glory that was Adobe Dreamweaver Dreamweaver was to web development what ... I just sat here for 5 minutes and I wasn't able to finish that sentence. So I think that's a statement in itself.
- riffraff 10mo ago
  ..VB6 was to windows dev? People with very little competence could and did get things done, but it was a mess underneath.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- zackerydev 10mo ago
  That was my point! Dreamweaver to web dev felt like what LLM's are to many disciplines!
pjmlp 10mo ago
I love how people speak about Dreamweaver in the past, while Adobe keeps getting money for it, https://developer.adobe.com/dreamweaver/ https://developer.adobe.com/dreamweaver/ And yes, as you can imagine for the kind of comments I do regarding high level productive tooling and languages, I was a big Dreamwever fan back in the 2000's.

girvo 10mo ago

I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00’s! My first PHP scripts and games were written using nothing more than Notepad too funnily enough

panzi 10mo ago
Back in the early 00s I brought gvim.exe on a floppy disk to school because I refused to write XSLT, HTML, CSS, etc without auto-indent or syntax highlighting.

frankest 10mo ago

DreamWeaver absolutely destroyed the code with all kinds of tags and unnecessary stuff. Especially if you used the visual editor. It was fun for brainstorming but plain notepad with clean understandable code was far far better (and with the browser compatibility issues the only option if you were going to production).

BobbyTables2 10mo ago
MS FrontPage also went out of its way to do the same.
- pram 10mo ago
  It’s funny this came up, because it was kinda similar to the whole “AI frauds” thing these days. I don’t particularly remember why, but “hand writing” fancy HTML and CSS used to be a flex in some circles in the 90s. A bunch of junk and stuff like fixed positioning in the source was the telltale sign they “cheated” with FrontPage or Dreamweaver lol
  - supriyo-biswas 10mo ago
    My only gripe was that they tended to generate gobs of “unsemantic” HTML. You resized a table and expect it to be based on viewport width? No! It’s hardcoded “width: X px” to whatever your size the viewport was set to.
- _joel 10mo ago
  It might have been pretty horrible but I hold Frontpage 97 with fond memories, it started my IT career, although not for HTML reasons. The _vti_cnf dir left /etc/passwd downloadable, so I grabbed it from my school website. One Jack the Ripper later and the password was found. I told the teacher resposible for the IT it was insecure and that ended up getting me some work experience. Ended up working the summer (waiting for my GCSE results) for ICL which immeasurably helped me when it was time to properly start working. Did think about defacing, often wonder that things could have turned out very much differently!
christophilus 10mo ago
After 25 or so years doing this, I think there are two kinds of developers: craftsmen and practical “does it get the job done” types. I’m the former. The latter seem to be what makes the world go round.
- fragmede 10mo ago
  It takes both.
- ghurtado 10mo ago
  If you've been doing it for that long (about as long as I have), then surely you remember all the times you had to clean up after the "git 'er done" types. I'm not saying they don't have their place, but without us they would still be making the world go round. Only backwards.
  - thebruce87m 10mo ago
    > all the times you had to clean up after the "git 'er done" types It’s lovely to have the time to do that. This time comes once the other type of engineer has shipped the product and turned the money flow on. Both types have their place.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
  - bigfatkitten 10mo ago
    I work in digital forensics and incident response. The “git ‘er done” software engineers have paid my mortgage and are putting my kids through private schooling.
  - ambicapter 10mo ago
    Well, going round in a circle does project to going forwards then backwards in a line :)
- KronisLV 10mo ago
chrisweekly 10mo ago
The HTML generated by Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG mode might not have been ideal, but it was far superior to the mess produced by MS Front Page. With Dreamweave, it was at least possible to use it as a starting point.
msephton 10mo ago
Judicious and careful use of Dreamweaver (its visual editor and properties bar) enabled me to write exactly the code I wanted. I used Dreamweaver foot table layouts and Home Site (later Top Style) for broader code edits. At that time I was famous with the company for being able to make any layout. Good times!

ghurtado 10mo ago

> glory that was Adobe Dreamweaver Dreamweaver was to web development what ... I just sat here for 5 minutes and I wasn't able to finish that sentence. So I think that's a statement in itself.

riffraff 10mo ago
..VB6 was to windows dev? People with very little competence could and did get things done, but it was a mess underneath.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
zackerydev 10mo ago
That was my point! Dreamweaver to web dev felt like what LLM's are to many disciplines!

pjmlp 10mo ago

I love how people speak about Dreamweaver in the past, while Adobe keeps getting money for it, https://developer.adobe.com/dreamweaver/ https://developer.adobe.com/dreamweaver/ And yes, as you can imagine for the kind of comments I do regarding high level productive tooling and languages, I was a big Dreamwever fan back in the 2000's.