My friend Andy over at Aloe Studios turned me on to Bulletproof Web Design, by Dan Cedarholm. Dan is a proponent of hand coding web sites and demonstrates a number of very elegant techniques for building web pages, which I have been soaking up.
Dan cites many advantages for this approach including increased maintainability and accessibility. I'm a believer. However, consider this argument from Joel Spoelsky: Strategy Letter VI. In this article Joel argues that because of the pace of technology someone will sooner or later invent a technology that makes the next quantum leap forward, which will make current 'hand-tuning' techniques obsolete. This is basically the exact opposite of the bulletproof design philosophy.
Or consider Paul Graham, beating the averages, where he argues that the most powerful tool will win the race. All good programmers know that building a tool to simplify your life is a worthwhile endeavor. And every time I work with my contractor friend Mark, I see that tools are everything for getting the job done quickly. This time the argument is that advanced elegant tools trump everything else.
Which brings me to ASP.net (version 2.0 dude). Everywhere I look on the job posting boards I see .NET technology. ASP.net is obviously an advanced tool for designing web pages, where you can create a lot of functionality in a very short time. And .NET in general has a huge market share. However, it is not very likely to generate bulletproof code, ala Cedarholm. Advanced? Yes. Elegant? Maybe. I think that bringing any kind of elegance to the ASP.net world will demand a deep knowledge of HTML, CSS, and the .NET framework. As always, it remains true that using an advanced tool still requires understanding the basics in an in-depth way. That's my current challenge.
Thanks for reading.
Steve
Dan cites many advantages for this approach including increased maintainability and accessibility. I'm a believer. However, consider this argument from Joel Spoelsky: Strategy Letter VI. In this article Joel argues that because of the pace of technology someone will sooner or later invent a technology that makes the next quantum leap forward, which will make current 'hand-tuning' techniques obsolete. This is basically the exact opposite of the bulletproof design philosophy.
Or consider Paul Graham, beating the averages, where he argues that the most powerful tool will win the race. All good programmers know that building a tool to simplify your life is a worthwhile endeavor. And every time I work with my contractor friend Mark, I see that tools are everything for getting the job done quickly. This time the argument is that advanced elegant tools trump everything else.
Which brings me to ASP.net (version 2.0 dude). Everywhere I look on the job posting boards I see .NET technology. ASP.net is obviously an advanced tool for designing web pages, where you can create a lot of functionality in a very short time. And .NET in general has a huge market share. However, it is not very likely to generate bulletproof code, ala Cedarholm. Advanced? Yes. Elegant? Maybe. I think that bringing any kind of elegance to the ASP.net world will demand a deep knowledge of HTML, CSS, and the .NET framework. As always, it remains true that using an advanced tool still requires understanding the basics in an in-depth way. That's my current challenge.
Thanks for reading.
Steve
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