153 - The Complicated Future of The Web Designer

What this episode covers

The web is getting more and more complicated, but where does that leave people trying to learn the trade? Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED Music and links from this episode A Walk by Mystery Mammal Lonely Satellite by Mystery Mammal Conviction by Little Glass Men Line-by-line notes I don't like making this podcast a look back on the golden days But today warrants a revisit When I first started making websites An embarrassingly long time ago now Some 16 years ago There were really only 2 things you needed to make one HTML And CSS Some people were still using tables for layout, but that's a different story for a different day And now, in 2017, you need way more than that Git, terminal, grunt, gulp, npm, package managers, jquery, JavaScript, Vue.js, deployment commands It isn't simple to make a website anymore This episode is all about my belief that the web is getting too complicated This is AADA, and I'm Craig Burgess MUSIC Yes, before you say it, you COULD still make a website out of just HTML and CSS these days When I make a website for myself, I usually like sticking to just these two simple things But if you rocked up to a web agency up and down the land tomorrow looking for a job And they asked you what you knew And you replied with HTML, CSS, and I know FTP to upload it They wouldn't be very impressed, and you'd be unlikely to get a job Let's get this straight,  for most agencies, they now expect more From graduates, they expect a lot of complicated technical knowledge Things like Git, task runners, setting up Terminal and using the Terminal are just the tip of the iceberg And I'd argue that this knowledge is expected And honestly, we've done this to ourselves The web industries desire to continue to push the boundaries, and to continue to get better To use faster and more efficient technologies To use better methodologies Has brought about a massive technological barrier to the web design game The rise of the role of a "front end developer" has lead to the development of lots of obscure and difficult to learn technologies I know all this, because I've tried to teach this stuff I've kept it simple too Things like basic Git commands, basic Grunt stuff, basic terminal commands And all of this goes of the head of nearly everybody I've tried teaching this to We're in this industry every day, and I don't think we've realised how complicated we've made things I genuinely don't think we've realised it Even responsive web design is difficult to teach people, and a difficult concept for a young designer and a young web developer to understand Over the past five years, we've seen the front end side of building a website Just the HTML and CSS stuff Take lots of hints and tips from the "real" development community And all that is really good Don't misinterpret what I'm saying here PRogress is good And progress is necessary And the web design industry has matured a lot But in our obsessive effort to get better and introduce better technologies We've forgotten how the hell we can teach this complicated stuff to the people who'll be replacing us in 10, 20 years time We've forgotten that this stuff IS complex, no matter what we think I usually like to end on an answer A simple solution that could fix everything that I've just been talking about One simple thing that could make everybody understand our job easier But unfortunately, I don't have it Our industry does need to keep getting more technologically advanced And we need to move with the times and the technology that is available to us And we do absolutely need young people coming up though the web industry So the answer just isn't...easy Or the answer isn't even there I guess all I'm trying to say Is just think of the kids man When you're making your next website, and you're implementing lots of time-saving, life changing technologies Think of all the young designers, developers, juniors,...