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Comment by nlte | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood why web design doesn't take place in a text editor and browser (with other tools, like Photoshop or Illustrator, for secondary tasks).

The output of web design is, ultimately, HTML and CSS, so what reason could a professional have to work with tools that can only yield an approximation of what they are paid to do? In my view, a designer without full mastery of at least HTML and CSS doesn't really deserve his title.

Going a little farther: with some knowledge of JavaScript, JSON and how to transform it (map, reduce, filter, sort), a designer can ask for some sample data and come up with a functioning prototype that offers truly important insights into the problems his design is supposed to solve. Client-side frameworks like Svelte.js are making all this very easy.

Nothing is more maddening, and a waste of time and money, than a Photoshop mockup using rudimentary, and generally too self-complacent, content.

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> The output of web design is, ultimately, HTML and CSS

The output of web design is ultimately a rendered, interactive webpage. We approve or reject websites by viewing them in a browser, not by looking at their code.

> a designer without full mastery of at least HTML and CSS doesn't really deserve his title.

Add to this the fact that the vast majority of web developers are very far from having a "mastery" of HTML and CSS. It's a huge API full of hacks and pitfalls.

Teach rudimentary HTML and CSS to a designer and they'll begin to think in that rudimentary interface, forgetting a competent developer with their far greater arsenal of tricks and tools can actually implement any UI they could imagine.

Your argument could apply to a field where the path from idea to end product is more straightforward. For instance, a comic book writer is expected to master the full pipeline from idea to colored page. A Disney concept artist on the other hand, is absolutely not required to know anything about 3d modeling. Web design mostly falls into that later category, we don't want our designers' creativity burdened by our medium's tedium.

You're right, everyone should have the same job as us! /s

Design is a different skill set than writing code. For some highly visual/spacial people, design is easy and intuitive, and managing lines of text is very unwieldy. Be like, 1% empathetic dude.

Anyway, if designers wrote the code you'd be out of a job. Design should be a continual conversation between someone with the vision and someone with the skills to implement it.

My comment didn't exactly imply that designers and programmers are the same, simply that web designers should be able to use the tools (and fully understand the constraints) of what constitutes the final output of their job, that is HTML and CSS. Writing CSS and server-side code are obviously two very different things. A designer could be a guy who types CSS in a text editor, among other things.

Might be a tough pill for some, but ultimately I agree it's the way the industry needs to end up. Consider the architect; he doesn't get to blue-sky wild ass concepts for a building. He has to draw within boundaries of local codes and feasibility, often using technical tools such as CAD.

An architect doesn't need to know how to tie rebar, though. That's more what the other commenter is suggesting.

"Designers should be engineers so they know what they're actually doing" is a pretty common feeling among engineers who have to deal with designers--not just in computer fields, but also in hardware, construction, even landscaping sometimes.

The reality is that they are very different disciplines, and the ability to integrate those competencies can be a competitive advantage for a company.

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