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> So forgive me for being smarmy and offensive, but I have no interest in being a ‘web guy’. And there are two reasons for this. First, it’s not a challenging

by gdp 17y ago

> So forgive me for being smarmy and offensive, but I have no interest in being a ‘web guy’. And there are two reasons for this. First, it’s not a challenging medium for me. And second, because the vast majority of Internet companies are filled with bad engineers – precisely because you don’t need to know complicated things to be a web developer. As far as I’m concerned, the Internet is responsible for a collective dumbing down of our intelligence. You just don’t have to be that smart to throw up a webpage. Sighhhhh. The entire tone of this article suggests somebody who has never done a lot of web programming, and is making a classic "I-haven't-done-it-so-it-must-be-easy" kind of judgement, with a very idealised view of the glamour of his own sub-discipline of software development. Sure, there is a huge amount of very mundane web programming in the world. But there is a proportionally larger of amount of very mundane non-web programming in the world, too. 95% of the programming that goes on the world is not "challenging" to a good developer. Taking a very reductionist viewpoint, web programming is just the same as non-web programming, but with a demand that the output from your program is structured in particular ways. I'm sure anyone can think of hundreds of examples of technically challenging and innovate programming that is best suited to delivery in a web environment? I get as annoyed with really bad web programmers as the next guy, but that's only because the web permits users to inflict their work on others much earlier in the development process than most mediums. Back in the days when I was first learning BASIC, the commercial internet was not so well-developed that I could easily inflict my software on a large group of people. Even if I did, my "death valley" clone would probably have had limited appeal. With the web, pretty much anybody learning a language like PHP or ASP or whatever can basically do some copy-and-paste programming and have something up on the web ready for public consumption before they have even finished figuring out how programming works.

bitdiddle 17y ago
yes, it lowers the barriers to entry. I think it's a great thing that a musician working at a conservatory can throw together her own web site using PHP and shoving some SQL into tables. I think that's success just as an accountant can hack spreadsheets with macros and so forth. That's also success.
tjr 17y ago
With the web, pretty much anybody learning a language like PHP or ASP or whatever can basically do some copy-and-paste programming and have something up on the web ready for public consumption before they have even finished figuring out how programming works. That was the route I took, and thankfully I was sufficiently chastised by better programmers for unleashing stupid, insecure PHP software that I became more cautious.
- gdp 17y ago
  And that's learning, right? I did exactly the same thing and I consider it a positive thing that people can easily produce software that is usable by other people without having to convince others to install software or do any "distribution" as such.

by gdp 17y ago

bitdiddle 17y ago

yes, it lowers the barriers to entry. I think it's a great thing that a musician working at a conservatory can throw together her own web site using PHP and shoving some SQL into tables. I think that's success just as an accountant can hack spreadsheets with macros and so forth. That's also success.

tjr 17y ago

With the web, pretty much anybody learning a language like PHP or ASP or whatever can basically do some copy-and-paste programming and have something up on the web ready for public consumption before they have even finished figuring out how programming works. That was the route I took, and thankfully I was sufficiently chastised by better programmers for unleashing stupid, insecure PHP software that I became more cautious.

gdp 17y ago
And that's learning, right? I did exactly the same thing and I consider it a positive thing that people can easily produce software that is usable by other people without having to convince others to install software or do any "distribution" as such.