That Time I Made A Website

Which is why "modern" frameworks like bootstrap still encourage grid layouts using explicit width classes like span3?

Face it, we haven't gotten any better since Mosaic.

It's not so much that the skillset that's required is different, though that's certainly part of it, it's that us junior devs are simply not used to having our code scrutinized very much. Sure, we've done some pair programming and group projects, but that was with other inexperienced undergrad/grad students, and it was difficult to just say "this code sucks, do it over" to an equal, just as much as it was difficult to hear that.

It's simply a mindset that is hard to break out of. A lot of us, myself included, were not ready for the reality that is a code review. I've gotten a lot more used to it, and I'm settling nicely into my role I think. Until now my mindset has been "make it work". I'm now transitioning to "make it work well. It's still hard to have to defend your code or methodology, or worse yet, during code review have the sudden realization that it is indefensible.

Sad to see another soul giving in to the temptation of "over-designing" things. For fuck's sake, what's wrong with light text on a white/gray backgrounds? She could've tweaked the fonts, spacing and colors a bit, but people no longer do that these days, instead she went full steam and overdesigned the shit out of it and it still looks bad.

...she could've learn a bit of Javascript and called herself a programmer instead of masturbating with CSS and posting about it on Facebook.

If you're not a designer, don't overdo design because you're not gonna do it well! If you are a designer, just stop when it looks "good enough" and start working on something more interesting than a bloody website design! We're wasting waaay too much of our lives "designing" stuff, whether it's our garden or a blog, instead of actually putting things and information in order (no, just "search" is no good enough though I guess some day I'll be able to google for my keys) or actually building cool new things!

You've yet to give a definition of "program" I cannot satisfy with HTML, CSS and Javascript. The notion of "non-trivial" is not rigorous.

> What other definition of "programmer" could you possibly be using?

This is what I am wondering, because by any rational examination of what you've presented you've refuted your own claim. HTML+CSS is turing complete, which in practice means I can "program" arbitrary logic in it. It is a dialect of computer programming heavily focused on displaying content, but clearly it can do things.

Clearly explain to me: why is making a modern webpage any different from writing a simple modern Ruby script? Or a trivial iPhone app, for that matter? Open up a nib file and you'll see a serialized object graph, heavily biased towards the presentation and its structure. Callbacks are annotated into the system. But you could make a "dumb" iPhone app without ever writing a single line of code, using drag and drop components and GUI clicks. Oh my, that seems even less like programming, but in many cases it's indistinguishable from programming.

You really need to step back and ask yourself, "What is the actual difference here?" Your primary justification so far has been about people, but your original claim was about what "programming" is. If a "programmer" is someone who programs computers and we cannot cleanly and clearly explain why webdev is not programming, then what?

And to be honest, it's sort of patronizing and discouraging to new users. HTML+CSS+JS is the most widely deployed, used, programed, customized, and maintained programming environment in human history. Most people will find their way to the discipline via web browsers now, just as most kids in my childhood did via BASIC (also a victim of aspersions like what you cast).

Methods change and evolve. Environments change and evolve. Most of all, requirements change and evolve.

What seemed like a first timer progressing, giving you the ahh, how cute (like a cat video), all ended for me on the last line, where she addressed me with my first name.

I immediately assumed it was someone who had used a facebook/google 0-day to get profile information and show off at the end, hitting you while you were at ease, reading this lovely progression... until I continued to read and figured she just had a friend called Nick :P Guess I'm to paranoid for the internet :)