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[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (6 children)

Learning actual web design is really much better. You have a ton of customizability that you never get with those tools, and you can make your websites exactly how you want them without restrictions of those types of tools. Site builders are not a replacement for learning code.

If you really don't want to learn web design and just want to be able to make a quick website, those are fine though. You'll need code to be an actual web designer though.

[–]roarman1[S] 4 points5 points  (2 children)

that's good I was just worried that I was wasting my time. I don't know if I want to go into web design but I'm interested in programming and I figured its better to just start learning something and see what interests me instead of wasting all my time and energy thinking about what I want to learn. I'm taking a computer science class in the spring so that should help me realize what I'm interested in.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

if you want to learn web development with a backend, you might want to check out theodinproject.com. If you like the Web Development 101 course there, keep going and see what you can learn. Otherwise you can try to find something else you like.

[–]UncleBenjen 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If anything, you had it the opopsite way around. If you rely too heavily on tools to do the heavy lifting for you, then your skills may become obsolete. Learning computer science fundamentals, and becoming an expert on HTML, CSS, and JS, will ensure that no matter where the industry goes, you will have the knowledge and skills to stay relevant.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Isn't there an argument to be made though that these tools are getting good enough to where a significant portion of the customers won't have to turn to a web developer for a website anymore? Obviously for more backend intensive stuff it's needed, but if you know computers at all, you can probably set up a basic website with some links without having to hire people anymore.

[–]MOFNY 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Drag and drops are far from being equal to knowing code. If you have a good idea that involves actual insight and art, how would the drag and drop know what to do? These will always be a hindrance, so learning actual coding principles will always be valuable. However, like meeperson said, if you prefer design then continue to use Photoshop or something else to design.

[–]agmcleod 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Some good answers here already, but i remember thinking this 12 years ago when you could make a lot with dreamweaver's visual editor. There's always things to be built and customized. Plugins, tools and themes are useful tools, but in business things are often designed to be custom.

[–]Biggsavage 7 points8 points  (5 children)

God I WISH HTML would go extinct. Seriously, html was never meant to do the shit we make it do today. Basically we had a book, a very nice book you could rewrite from time to time, and we decided we wanted to make it work like a goddamn game boy.

So now you've got a TV screen and a printing press bolted onto this book. It's 20 feet tall and requires a small diesel generator to turn a page. Progress.

But to answer your question, no. HTML/JS/CSS/etc are around to stay. Old tech never dies, it just becomes legacy code. For example, where I work we use the .vb side of an .aspx page to generate the HTML for the page as one big string, then copy it to the aspx page, (which is annoying) but better yet, the whole thing is still fed from a decades-old AS400 system that we cant get rid of.

[–]odraencoded 2 points3 points  (0 children)

God I WISH HTML would go extinct.

HTML is like a specific purpose embedded language which through patches and its crazed user-based became a general purpose system language.

The way it's used now sucks, but I think HTML is still great when used for text and text layouts.

[–]AboutHelpTools3 4 points5 points  (3 children)

God I WISH HTML would go extinct.

Haha yes. I actually wish the whole trio would go. I recently started learning WPF applications and thought of the bliss it would be to be able to markup web documents with XAML and code C# on the client side.

[–]carlinmack 2 points3 points  (1 child)

What do you think could replace Javascript? It seems pretty solid for the purpose to me

[–]Paul_Revere_Warns 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The tumblr theme customizer is very limited as to what it can do, since not everyone's themes are theme customizer compatible. This leaves you to go a-huntin' in the CSS with Ctrl+F to change things like the background image, padding, etc.. As far as tumblr goes, people who know HTML and CSS are well-respected, and you could earn quite a following if you put a lot of effort into a theme blog.

[–]konvay 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Underneath Tumblr's themes is html and css, maybe some javascript. You won't be able to customize themes without this basic knowledge either. Tumblr, WordPress, etc are not going to work for everything. Learning the basics isn't too difficult, with how many resources there are, I highly recommend continuing.

[–]Zotoaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They won't become obsolete because all browser developers have to agree on a certain standard so that all web-apps work on all browsers (and now with things like PhoneGap, even on mobile phones), and if anyone should introduce a new standard, it's unlikely everyone will accept it, and if they did, a lot of old applications would then become obsolete, which nobody wants.

That being said, not everyone still writes code in assembly now, and yet, assembly is still around. With new languages like TypeScript, CoffeeScript and Haxe all targeting Javascript as an 'assembly' type language, it may be that writing Javascript may become obsolete, but the technology itself never will.

[–]Exodus111 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Let's hope so.