{"id":1722,"date":"2010-06-05T11:28:54","date_gmt":"2010-06-05T16:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackgate.net\/blog\/?p=1722"},"modified":"2010-06-05T11:45:02","modified_gmt":"2010-06-05T16:45:02","slug":"why-i-no-longer-do-web-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackgate.net\/blog\/why-i-no-longer-do-web-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I no longer do web design"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got my start in computers by writing small applications in Basic, and then Visual Basic. In the late 1980s, I wrote a program that backed up selected directories by copying them, zipping them up, and writing them to floppy disks. In the early 1990s, I wrote macros to integrate PGP and Microsoft Word. I also wrote a reasonably popular dice-rolling program (I was one of the first few thousand people to do so). However, I got my start <em>working<\/em> in IT by doing web design. My friend Nathan told me about NCSA Mosaic in early 1993, and within two months of the release of Mosaic, I was creating web pages. (It still amazes me that the web took off like it did &#8212; I just thought it was a neat toy.)<\/p>\n<p>I eventually migrated from what I call &#8220;front end&#8221; work (the part of a web site people can see), to &#8220;back end&#8221; work (the stuff behind the scenes that actually makes a web site work &#8212; setting up databases, writing scripts, managing servers, and so on). One reason for this is that I am not a graphic designer &#8212; I am simply not an artist. Another reason is that as more people learned how to do &#8220;web design&#8221;, I could maintain my value by doing something more difficult (difficult for other people; not necessarily difficult for me).<\/p>\n<p>However, the number one reason I moved away from web design and toward back end work is because I had too many web clients who made my job difficult. Not all of them. Perhaps not even most of them. But a lot of them. What do I mean by &#8220;difficult&#8221;? I mean <a href=\"http:\/\/theoatmeal.com\/comics\/design_hell\">this<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/theoatmeal.com\/comics\/design_hell\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/theoatmeal.com\/img\/comics\/design_hell\/header.jpg\" alt=\"How a web design goes straight to hell\" title=\"How a web design goes straight to hell\" style=\"border: none; margin: 4px;\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got my start in computers by writing small applications in Basic, and then Visual Basic. In the late 1980s, I wrote a program that backed up selected directories by copying them, zipping them up, and writing them to floppy disks. In the early 1990s, I wrote macros to integrate PGP and Microsoft Word. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-work"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why I no longer do web design - Blackmoor Vituperative<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blackgate.net\/blog\/why-i-no-longer-do-web-design\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why I no longer do web design - Blackmoor Vituperative\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I got my start in computers by writing small applications in Basic, and then Visual Basic. 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