Monte

Microsoft is offering a free license of Windows Vista Business Edition for anybody willing to watch three Webcasts related to Windows development. It’s no scam, either; I participated in a similar offer from Microsoft about three years ago. They gave out free copies of Visual Studio for watching Webcasts and participating in a couple of online surveys. I jumped at the chance; however, this was back in the days when I was still considering a career in computer science, before I learned that it required significant math skills, and before I realized that programmers generally do not make for good Web designers.

I always assumed that the two were somewhat synonymous when discussed in the context of Web development, but I’ve slowly come to learn over time that the two careers have completely different values, philosophies and skills. This became clear when I was elected to redesign a simple Web application which a small group of programmers had created using ASP.net. Seeing their raw HTML for the first time was like a kick in the teeth. It was a myriad of broken tags, poorly nested tables, and deprecated formatting techniques. And when I brought this to the attention of a coworker, his response was, “They’re programmers. What did you expect?”

Earlier this month at a family dinner, I met my step-grandmother’s daughter’s son. He looked to be in his mid-thirties and had the physique of the common computer programmer, and my observation later proved correct. I learned that he works for a small company which ports old software to newer platforms. When I told him that I was a Web designer, his face turned sour, and he jokingly said, “Oh, so you’re one of those people.”

I suppose the friendly hostility is mutual. Programmers see design gurus as artsy-fartsy, indie-loving, Web 2.0, usability Nazis, and designers see programmers as wreck-less, Mountain Dew chugging, “It’s-not-a-bug-it’s-a-feature”, first-person shooter addicts. To some extent, it’s the truth. After all, it wouldn’t be a stereotype if there wasn’t some amount of truth to it.