Derek Fountain wrote:
Presumably you also program in assember because you don't trust a compiler to do a workman like job in building an executable? Do you trust a word processor to lay out your documents correctly? Or a DTP program? Where do you draw the line?
I draw the line at "What will do a GOOD job, with the least amount of backtracking". Why have to go back over the job, just to make sure it was right, when it should have been done right in he first place?
Some things can't be done properly by computer.
That's why I use a text-based editor!
That's why those program generator programs from the 80's never really took off.
There isn't much fom the eighties left still going in computing circles ('cept Unix, of course!) But HTML is, for the most part, easy, and
therefore easy to automate.
Granted. But is it being automated well? Different programs do things in different ways. Take a document, and, in M$ Word, export it to HTML. Then look at the source code that results. Then try the same thing through StarOffice. Like chalk & cheese! Some do certain things better than others, but none can do them as well as a human being (yet!).
The fact that these editor programs exist and vast numbers of web sites are created using them kind of blows a hole in your argument.
I notice you didn't say "good" web sites.
An amateur with a good tool can cover 95% of the web site creation task.
Background, and generic (template) layout.
A professional with a good tool can cover 98% of it.
Background, and a customised layout, desiigned to suit the customers' requirements.
If you, as a professional, choose to do that 98% yourself the hard way, that's your business.
That's how I do my business, and get repeat business, while all the script-kiddies with their pirated versions of FP (et. al.) are saying they can build a web site for half my price and in half the time. I sell quality, not bland, repetitive, regurgitated quantity.
Personally, I'd rather get that bit done with a tool and concentrate on the last 2%.
I'd rather get the first 2% right and have a satisfied customer.
It's that last little bit that sets OK sites apart from outstanding ones.
See, I just knew we would agree on something! :-)
Like I've said in every industry I've been in, but even more so in anything computer related, "You can have it cheap, or you can have it good. But you ain't going to have it good AND cheap!"
Like SuSE Linux?
I could have d/l'ed the source files for nothing, but I chose to buy the full 6 CD set. That way I got a PROFESSIONALLY built product, that works! Along with the support, and the knowledge that, if I'm away on a business trip and something goes wrong, the poor guy who has to fix it will know where he's at, because it is not made from some cobbled up, tied together with string and wire, and made from componenets that would 'maybe' fit together. I have no say in the way SuSE sets their pricing structure. But I will say that if they doubled their prices tomorrow, it'd still be a bargain! In closing, I will say that my customers come to me for a couple of reasons: a) They know that they will get quality work done, to suit their company image (not someone elses' idea of what their image should be). b) It takes me about 1/2 an hour to teach someone in their organisation how to update their daily specials. This is because I can tell him to "Go to this page, and look for the lines that are indented by (two, three or four) tabs and start with "http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/