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I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

polygeek.com

51–60 of 89 posts

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#51
post #17

Actually, this criticism is true when you use HTML for what it was not intended to do : Make pretty renderings. The core functionality of HTML is to provide hyperlinked data. It does that concisely and efficiently. CSS and DIVs are a mere kludge added on top of a language that is supposed to transmit mainly semantical data. I really wish xhtml would have won in place of HTML/CSS. This kind of things would have been f…

Same here. I think the return to "do whatever you want and we try to interpret it correctly" was wrong. Code in XHTML is way more readable, maintainable and easier to learn (IMO). I still write my HTML5 in correct XHTML Syntax.

I was doing that, but then found out that the XHTML empty-tag is not valid for all elements in HTML5.

See http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/... (via http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/minimal-html via http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3356389 )

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#52

it also means that "I'm too lazy to figure out that there is no such html developer". html is all about a few xml tags. everybody can do it. I know some music bands, authors and politicians who code website learning basic html. and I see some developers who ignores coding html because they think they're too smart to code a simple website. no comment.

Can we get over this? This "LOL He's calling himself an HTML DEVELOPER of all things!" mentality isn't helping anyone. You don't see spiders belittling us for calling ourselves "web developers," do you? You especially can't do this now that WHATWG and W3C have started to confuse and redefine what HTML/HTML5 is and the technologies behind it.

So, let's breathe a little, and accept that if professionals can get called shrinks, we can accept that people have different vernacular for what we do. Hell, we don't have a single unifying title either. So, unless your proposing to call me by my professional title of "Interwebz Spin Doctor", take a second to realize that "html developer" isn't that bad.

There is HTML, and he is developing it.

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#53

CSS is a declarative language, not an imperative language, so there is no concept of a breakpoint in CSS, because there is no concept of one thing occurring before another. There is a chain of inheritance of course, but Firebug will show you that. A web browser + Firebug/Web Inspector is effectively a giant REPL, what more could you want?

The order of evaluation matters. If the browser finds 2 declarations that are in conflict, then only the last one is taken into account. And that's not inheritance.

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#54
post #18

For me, web development seems like the exact opposite of desktop development. In desktop development, you learn the underlying foundations first (the programming language, files, networking, graphics, GUIs, etc), then weave them together to build your application. It's slow, but worth it -- often the concepts are universal. How many times do you have to re-learn file IO? In web development, it's really easy to build…

> How many times do you have to re-learn file IO?

Dunno. Bytes IO or text IO? evented IO? Lazy IO? Monadic IO? Which platform are you on? Will there be concurrent access? Is your file always a file or is it also a socket?

Yeah, you re-learn file IO quite a bit I'd say. And that's without talking about APIs going from straightforward (and broken) to completely baroque (and still broken).

Oh sure, sometimes

> it's really to [read a file] quickly and but not understand any of the foundations.

isn't it?

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#55

Flash and Flex seem safe for 4 years? Are we putting money on this, eh?

Hahaha. I love this attitude. I have heard it for the better part of a decade and I keep charging a premium for flash work because there are not enough quality people that know it.

I know HTML and a bunch of server languages as well so I'm covered if something would happen. I'm not going to say that flash is here forever but it will take a lot longer to disappear than you probably think, especially with the new 3d stuff.

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#56

I honestly find it easier to build UI elements from the ground up over using plug-ins, because like with any other code if you are the one who developed it you understand it . I too have been turned off by lightbox and slider plugins for jQuery, and find it easier to just come up with that kind of thing myself rather than jump into someone else's codebase.

I'm sure you have better things to do than build a lightbox from scratch. Take 10 minutes to learn someone else's solution and you can move on to solving the actual problem for which you were tasked, which likely has little to do with lightboxes.

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#57
post #18

For me, web development seems like the exact opposite of desktop development. In desktop development, you learn the underlying foundations first (the programming language, files, networking, graphics, GUIs, etc), then weave them together to build your application. It's slow, but worth it -- often the concepts are universal. How many times do you have to re-learn file IO? In web development, it's really easy to build…

This is the nature of things. We use our lower-level tools to build higher-level tools that make the technology (or processes like development) more accessible to more people. Could you imagine having to build everything from scratch every time a new job came along?

"Build us a banking system that can be used by our employees to safeguard our customers' deposits and analyze our loaning ability, while providing web-based access to accounts by customers."

"OK. First, we'll need several tons of sand, some raw copper ..."

I think it speaks volumes that the infrastructure design of the web (or perhaps the Internet) prevents todays web app developers from worrying about how their bits move from the server CPU to the users' screens.

P.S. I'm terribly disappointed in my fellow posters actually answering the rhetorical question.

Edit: ordering is important to clarity

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#58
post #18

For me, web development seems like the exact opposite of desktop development. In desktop development, you learn the underlying foundations first (the programming language, files, networking, graphics, GUIs, etc), then weave them together to build your application. It's slow, but worth it -- often the concepts are universal. How many times do you have to re-learn file IO? In web development, it's really easy to build…

I had a course in grad school in which we wrote our own database system, including having to calculate the storage to disk... as in, calculate the sectors, and where you had to break fields to a new sector, and read/write the raw binary data to/from the hard disk.

I have not really had to re-learn file IO since then.

Clearly there are new things to be learned... (do usb sticks even have sectors?)... but having that low-level experience tends to be more than enough for a front-end web developer.

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#59

CSS is a declarative language, not an imperative language, so there is no concept of a breakpoint in CSS, because there is no concept of one thing occurring before another. There is a chain of inheritance of course, but Firebug will show you that. A web browser + Firebug/Web Inspector is effectively a giant REPL, what more could you want?

The order of evaluation matters. If the browser finds 2 declarations that are in conflict, then only the last one is taken into account. And that's not inheritance.

There is more to it than just that. For example you can have a class and an id for a div. The id attributes will overwrite the class ones. And some other fun rules too!

Re: I’m too lazy to be a HTML developer

#60
post #30

I felt too lazy to be a Flex programmer. After years in HTML-land, MXML programming felt like an absolute kludge and Adobe's flex tools were slower than molasses. I was miserable enough doing it that I rejected multiple flex jobs that came my way.

When adobe eventally pause to ponder the Doom hanging over the flash ecosystem, they will realize that it was Flex that killed it.

Um, yeah -- then again, maybe not.
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