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December 12th, 2011Developer vs Designer
November 3rd, 2011This is kind of a repost from July 2010, with a couple of changes. See if you can spot them ;)
Recently in my professional career, I have shifted from being a Web Designer Developer to a Web Developer Designer. I love all aspects of building a website- planning, designing and developing, but I have essentially just "planted my flag" in the development camp. For those who are not versed in what Designers and Developers do:
Designers:
Designers make the site look aesthetically nice as well as develop a naturalistic "flow" for navigation and how you move about the site. This involves some coding skills in HTML, CSS, Flash and some Javascript. Web Designers generally come from a training background in design and live in the application pool of Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks and Dreamweaver.
Developers:
Developers write the code that makes everything work as it was intended. At times, developers will dip into design with the layout of a form as well as coding the CSS and Javascript. Mostly though, they deal with programing the server-side application in one of many various languages including PHP, asp.NET, Coldfusion, Java, etc...
Eyes glazed over yet? Don't worry, that's as tech-speek as I'll get ;)
It's interesting that both camps look down on each other at some level. Both talented, creative and technical whizzes, each think the other as buffoons.
How Designers see Developers:
Elitist snobby nerds with no style. Coding in their mom's basement til the wee hours in the dark, they alternate between online gaming and writing code that only they can fathom. They dare to actually "design" a page, because they know what a header, body and footer is. They also think there are only 2 fonts in the world- "default" and "Arial."
How Developers see Designers:
Elitist snobby, Starbucks-drinking hipsters. They have rock-star delusions that they're recreating the web with every-freak'n site they build, when it's just another WordPress-looking hack. They dare to pretend they know code because they can hack some html and CSS and tack "developer" on the end of their title because they know how to echo "Hello World" with PHP. BALLS!
The fact is- both camps are right and neither are as good as they think they are ;) After living in the two camps, I've found complete respect for both. They're filled with incredibly talented people that know a great deal about their process. Sure, each could build a decent site without the other, but not a truly exceptional site!






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