Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

Back in the day the web designer did everything including the artistic parts of building a website.

Nowadays, most companies building websites have split the responsibilities into multiple roles.

Frontend Engineers aren’t called “web designers” because that’s not what they do. A UX Designer and graphic designer decided how a button should look and feel, and the frontend engineer is the one who implements the functionality in code. They literally are not designers.

The article acknowledges the splitting of the roles but doesn’t explain why this is supposed to be a bad thing. It’s pretty obvious why the split took place: because websites are more complex and standards are higher (unless you think the space jam website is the pinnacle of web design).

You’re totally right that there is now more complexity, especially around tooling and deployment. We have pipelines now, Docker containers, things that just aren’t simple and direct like a plain HTML+CSS website

However in my experience the best “front-end engineers” are designers. One of the best I’ve ever worked with called himself “Devsigner.” He was a passionate Android developer who knew the platform conventions better than the designers did, he was able to identify tiny flaws in designs (incorrect font weights, inconsistent padding, adherence to platform conventions), as well as larger flaws in the UX, for example, how to consistently and intuitively navigate between screens, when and where to place navigation elements, etc

Development wise, he was able to devise the app architecture clearly. Write end-to-end mock servers to perform UI testing, build the dev ops pipeline, manage app releases, and implement the UI using best practices

I am the same sort of designer/developer, and I expect that many people are capable of doing both things like this. They just need the opportunity and positive feedback to get there

Websites are more complex, but I expect people to be capable of learning complex things and to be aware of, and apply, design principles

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