The idea that you could make a website and not know HTML blows my mind because it’s like building a building and not knowing what a brick is…You can be a CSS wizard or you can know the basics, but you should at least have some foundational knowledge of what your building material is.
—
Ryan during the 37signals podcast Design roundtable – Part 3 (transcript to Part 3 now available).
Ryan during the 37signals podcast Design roundtable – Part 3 (transcript to Part 3 now available).
Mark
on 13 Sep 10The industry has made it easy to publish an HTML document without knowing one line of code. Once the home building industry does something similar - File -> Save As—> New Home, then you’ll have a valid comparison.
Micheal
on 13 Sep 10Why does this blow your mind?
I assume that person is creating a web site, without the need for HTML, by using a tool.
Tools, much like Basecamp, are meant to make our lives easier.
There exist many kind of tools. Low level tools like hammers, and high-level tools like this wizard that is allowing someone to create a web site without the need for HTML. Both types of tools have a purpose and are intended to be used by two different type of people.
Joe
on 13 Sep 10However, you can still design a building without knowing what a brick is. In the same way, you can design a beautiful and functional website without knowing HTML.
This happens everywhere in programming, and its for the better. For example, C is an abstraction of the raw assembly language. Ruby abstracts much more.
Working in a high level language is how the smart can beat the averages by exploring the details of the problem and not the details of the underlying machinery.
Blain Smith
on 13 Sep 10I think the underlying message is you need to know HOW to use the tool whether its a wizard or HTML.
A person can still use a tool to create a website and use Heading 1s for the whole thing and it will look like shit. A tool is only effective in the hands of a knowledgeable user.
Cleetus
on 13 Sep 10I completely and wholeheartedly disagree with this quote.
1. It overstates the importance of websites. When buildings fail, people die. Rarely is this the case with websites. It’s the same reason why we don’t license bloggers, but we do license architects and their building industry compatriots.
2. It is not true. In most use cases where someone wants to publish something on a web page, they care more about what they’re publishing (images and words) than how it looks.
3. It’s unnecessary elitism. Why should someone need to know CSS when all they want to do is put their words on the web? It’s akin to an internet publishing poll tax.
Jason
on 13 Sep 10Mark: Sure, you can pick holes in this comparison all day, but the core idea is true. I think it’s more like this: a designer who doesn’t know CSS/HTML is like an architect who doesn’t know anything about structural engineering. Of course we have dedicated structural engineers, but the architect needs to at least have a grasp of it in order to create buildings that won’t collapse. Same with materials: they have to pick the right materials for the job as each will behave differently, conserving less heat, being heavier, weaker, etc. CSS is of course much simpler than architecture, but when designing websites those who have a grasp of it will be able to deliver stuff that’s going to be easy to implement and that’s going to work right away—they think in markup and styles. If you design the site in Photoshop and then give it to your coders to slice up and put together then you’re simply creating extra work that doesn’t need to be.
Aaron M
on 13 Sep 10@Joe and @Michael design is different then building. You can design a building, but you can’t build one without knowing what a brick is. In the case of Ruby, it does remove the task of memory management, and provides a more beautiful coding experience. Ruby removes the lower level programming for you, building construction still requires knowledge of how to construct it :).
That said, their are tools one can use to build a webpage, but they arent perfect. Occasionally when a designer here is building a page in DreamWeaver, I help him out for accomplishing certain tasks, as he needs to edit the raw HTML in order to do it. Generally speaking WYSIWYG editors don’t do a good job at HTML semantics.
Mark
on 13 Sep 10I may be thinking about a different level then you are, but I have also argued that we should not hinder the artist/designer/architect with the practical side of how things are put together. If they have to always think of the how, we may never have sculpture that defies gravity, web sites that defy the traditional, or buildings like Frank Gehry’s. Just a thought.
Hibiscus
on 13 Sep 10I almost got fired a while back for promoting this point of view to my boss’s boss, who came up through the traditional media creative industry (I got back, rather ferociously, the “A good idea is a good idea, the communication medium doesn’t matter” retort).
I still believe, with Ryan, that you can only design well for a medium if you understand the technical foundations of that medium, but in my experience, bad design comes less often from ignorance of the medium than from importing inappropriate assumptions from some other medium the designer knows well. The worst website designs I’ve ever seen have come from designers who were very accomplished in TV or print (remember the craze for homepage video avatars a few years back?), and they get approved from managers who have the same background.
Mark
on 13 Sep 10As stated above, as architects are licensed, any architect that doesn’t know anything about structural engineering, isn’t a recognized architect - and although I’m not sure about this - I doubt one can call himself an architect if he’s not.
Until the day comes when web designers are held to the same standard as an architect, designers can still build websites without knowing an inch of HTML, and still be a designer, whether their peers or experts in the industry agree with it, or not.
Joe
on 13 Sep 10@Aaron if HTML is the lowest level, then I agree: you can’t build without knowing what a brick is. That’s the builder’s tool. In the context of high level languages, the compiler becomes the builder. The designer informs the builder what to build, but not how to build it. This is still building, just at a more abstract higher level.
That said, this quote sounds like a result of not having better high-level tools. You don’t hear many people puzzling over how programmers can construct desktop applications without knowing assembly. These tools & compilers are more evolved.
I don’t necessarily mean UI or WYSIWYG tools either. It could instead be a high-level XML language named X that uses more abstract elements rather than HTML primitives. Or something without <>’s in it. This can then compile down to HTML+CSS, etc. They will emerge one day though, and then less people will wonder how anything can be built without knowing HTML. Instead, they may wonder how anybody can build websites without knowing X :)
Jason Klug
on 13 Sep 10As someone who has worked both in both the website-building AND building-building industries, I can attest to what happens when someone who doesn’t understand the construction process tries to design a building: the highly-standardized elements work just fine, but any originality they try to bring to the design (pushing the boundaries of the layout, materials, etc.) usually fails or takes an insane/impractical amount of effort and heads-up reworking by the experienced members of the construction crew to see its way into the finished product.
Tools that facilitate abstraction, by their nature, limit what you can put into the finished product. If you’re looking to set up sensible defaults and a more standardized development approach, then that’s great and one can have a lot of success without knowing anything deeper than that tool. If your goal is to push the limits of the medium and your abilities, then an abstraction tool is going to get in your way more than it helps you.
This leads to a deeper discussion of what abstraction means, that civilization itself is just a deepening stack of abstractions as we make progress and move on to solving higher-order problems, and that everything can be considered an abstraction of something else (right down to the 1s and 0s)...
But I think being able to code HTML by hand is a sensible skill level to be attained by anyone who fancies themselves a designer/builder of websites today. Once the tools advance, and tools are built on top of those tools, then great… HTML becomes another too-deep-to-care-about layer. But right now, and for the foreseeable future, directly manipulating HTML sans abstraction is too critical to not know.
Scott
on 13 Sep 10The idea that you could make a website and not know socket programming blows my mind because it’s like building a building and not knowing what plumbing is.
Michael S
on 13 Sep 10@Cleetus and @Mark
Yes, buildings will kill people if they collapse. And they make dust and break sewer lines and all kinds of other things most web sites don’t do. It doesn’t mean there are no negative consequences of ignoring the structure of a web site.
If you don’t know HTML/CSS, how can you do proper accessibility or SEO? How can you build something you know can be maintained or integrated with a CMS? These are “structural” qualities that will suffer if can’t verify the code is solid.
Dave Aronson
on 13 Sep 10Reminds me of reading the Ruby on Rails Google group… and seeing questions where the answer would be screamingly obvious if the person actually knew a lick of Ruby… while they’re saying they have a lot of RoR experience…. :-P
IMHO you can’t really call yourself highly experienced, or maybe even competent, at something when you have absolutely no clue what’s going on under the hood. To extend that analogy, it’s like driving a car without any clue that you need to put gas in it, or change the oil once in a while, or keep the tires inflated (but not too much), and so on….
Micheal
on 13 Sep 10Counterpoint:
Some of the best designs and products in history were created by people who did NOT understand the “building blocks” because their mind was free to imagine without constraints.
Mark
on 13 Sep 10So, in the same thought, would a master craftsman consider it valid design if a laser guided saw cut the wood? Do old day typesetters consider those who pick out pretty fonts online as one of them? What about digital photographers who’ve never spent time developing a negative in the dark room?
Jason Klug
on 13 Sep 10@Micheal
Agreed, there are anecdotes to the contrary: Einstein revolutionized physics without knowing the language with which every other physicist described their work: advanced mathematics (and having been terrible at the basics, like algebra). But he still had a deeper feeling of the building blocks of the universe. In a way, he bypassed the traditional abstraction.
But there are certainly more cases where the guy who doesn’t know math doesn’t succeed in (or add anything worthwhile to the discussion of) physics. An order of magnitude more, I’d bet.
As long as websites are rendered and interacted with via web browsers, and as long as those web browsers are interpreting (primarily) HTML and CSS to assemble that page, you can’t “bypass” that knowledge of HTML and CSS (and their limits) with a more base-level understanding.
Scott
on 13 Sep 10The web development community is funny. They talk about keeping the web a place that is open and accessible, equally to all. And at the same time spend as much or more energy talking about how web pages should be made by experienced craftspeople, hand-coded to professional standards. Making web pages is either limited to those deemed skilled enough or it is open to all. Logic dictates you can’t have it both ways.
RS
on 13 Sep 10To clarify, I think it’s fantastic when clients can edit their own websites. And it’s also great that people can use template systems or software tools to produce websites for themselves without technical knowledge. Those things are excellent.
What I’m talking about in the podcast is professionals who are paid to design websites for other people. Those people will get better results if they know their building material than if they don’t.
Jason Klug
on 13 Sep 10@Scott
There are two different arguments there:
1) The sense in which anyone with an internet connection and a text editor can build a web page (and rightly so…)
2) Best practices that are widely adopted among professionals working in the medium.
No one is saying that someone with a WYSIWYG editor can’t or shouldn’t be able to create a page. What I think we’re arguing here is that to call yourself a “maker of websites” is something else entirely… where there is a connotation of knowing the medium in which one is working.
Scott
on 13 Sep 10I agree. In the context of paid professionals one should understand HTML. I admit I overlooked the context of the quote and considered the “you” to mean that it was directed toward any reader or listener.
G. Guest
on 13 Sep 10Considering how easy it is to learn basic HTML, professionals who don’t even bother to learn how it works are simply lazy in my opinion.
You can get a baseline level of knowledge in an afternoon, and a pretty good grasp of the next level up in a couple of days. Knowing those basics really helps troubleshoot issues that arise when using an editor or other tool set.
DC
on 13 Sep 10I agree. A designer that does not code is not passionate about the Web. They are only interested in graphics.
Richard
on 13 Sep 10The quote is not well thought out. I don’t need to know TCP/IP to build a website, yet it’s even more core than HTML. Pick some more insightful quotes.
Dan
on 14 Sep 10A lot of people are lost learning HTML, Rails, PHP whatever instead of solving problems or providing value.
Matt Kocaj
on 15 Sep 10Mike
on 15 Sep 10Totally true – just like all good designers who create PDFs know the basics of PostScript. I personally hand-code all my bezier curves because I’m a passionate, creative person, but you’d be surprised at how many people think this is a ridiculous waste of time and has nothing to do with design.
Olivier Lalonde
on 15 Sep 10How many architects know how to use a hammer?
Chuck
on 16 Sep 10Crap, Mike beat me to it: I don’t know squat about PostScript, but I’ve been making useful, usable PDFs for over a decade now.
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