Web Developers often get pigeon-holed as less serious or second class programmers. While the Web 2.0/AJAX revolution seems to be changing that somewhat, it is still present. I have recently been tinkering with Ruby on Rails and was discussing it with a Java Enterprise developer. When I mentioned my job title/position his response was a cautionary “Well, Ruby on Rails uses a lot of object oriented programming techniques”. Is burying your head in messy Java code all day a prerequisite to program intelligently and elegantly? I was thoroughly annoyed. The web developer is the Jack-of-all-trades of the computing industry. Here are the tasks I did on my last project:

  • Created a visually appealing design for a website
  • Converted that design into standards compliant, cross-browser friendly HTML and CSS
  • Enhance the user interface with JavaScript via DHTML and AJAX
  • Create a database schema to support the application data
  • Created PHP classes to interface with the database and the application and implement business rules
  • Acted as systems administrator for the project, maintaining and configuring the server and all required services.

Stack that up with the fact that usually you work all alone, with no one to bounce ideas off of or discuss problems, and I don’t really see how non-web developers have come to that conclusion. But they have. Let’s put an end to Web Developer oppression!