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October 24, 2006
Meyer on dues
Meyer on dues: Eric Meyer writes to persuade that long study of existing treatises is a prerequisite to "becoming a web designer". He does so by a series of analogies: to "be a farmer" you need to learn of soil; to "be a sculptor" you need to study rock and other material; to "be a graphic designer" you need to study other stuff. As you can probably guess by my use of quotes, I think he's working under some unstated assumptions with that copula "to be"... it may be less confusing to speak of "i want to do farming" and "i want to do web design". HTML was originally simple and straightforward, browsers were tolerant of error, and production was accessible to lots of humans... sometimes I've felt like we're trying to keep newcomers out by making things more and more complex, "you must not use tables for layout" and "your site must validate" and all the rest. Reminds me of how hairdresser licenses require courses on perms before you can braid for money, or how musicians were barred from playing if they didn't join the right union... there are financial advantages in keeping the newcomers out, raising artificial barriers to entry. I'd agree that if you wish to be successful at anything then continual study really helps, but I don't think that arguing "you're not *really* a so-and-so" is helpful, or even very meaningful. "How can I improve what I'm doing?" seems to lead to better conversations....
Posted by JohnDowdell at October 24, 2006 6:17 AM