↵

We Don’t Need More Designers Who Can Code(medium.com)

over 8 years ago from Saneef Ansari, Consultant Designer & Developer

  • Mike Wilson, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    I appreciate you clarifying and I agree with you completely. Those light coding skills are definitely a huge help to any team, even if it's only a general understanding of code. And for the record I have no problem with designers writing strictly HTML/CSS.

    My beef is that a lot of people don't understand what you just described, that HTML/CSS is only a portion of the front-end, even people in the comments below. And this trickles down to hiring managers. They think because all these people call themselves "designer/front-end dev" on their linkedin, suddenly they don't need to be hiring dedicated front-end guys for those roles (or really, engineers). I've freelanced at too many small to mid-size companies with jack-of-all-trades types that the article describes doing mediocre work because they are given too many responsibilities. Unless it's a <5 person start-up, Leave the JS logic to an engineer.

    3 points
    • Paul BestPaul Best, over 8 years ago

      This makes a lot of sense! The idea of being at a mid-size company where I'm expected to handle all logic and UI makes my skin crawl. People like me know just enough to be dangerous when it comes to that sorta stuff.

      Logic is fucking hard, I'd rather have someone on my team who's whole job is creating a really nice API. I wouldn't want to get much deeper than maybe binding that data to the UI

      0 points