In 30: On Designing and Coding

This is the first (and hopefully not only) in a series of posts that are written in 30 minutes or less. Excuse (or don’t) the lack of polish.

From the perspective of someone who’s primarily a developer…

For a while, designers who code and coders who design have been a hot topic. The gist is that you lose focus doing both, and are therefore less efficient and doing either (jack of all trades, master of none). Despite the fact that this is a blanket statement that pushes aside all the individual differences that makes us human in the first place, and knowing that the whole left-brain, right-brain “thing” is pretty much known to be bunk, let’s assume that this is correct. Given that, I think there’s another angle to see this.

Coding and designing are not mutually exclusive. The fact that you have to learn how to use a tool like Photoshop or Illustrator and all the nuances of setting up actions, using adjustment layers, dealing with resolutions, understanding Bézier curves, and more, serves as an intrinsic lack of focus on just putting your concept on the screen.

I believe we’re more than our primary job title makes us out to be, and we’re stronger people because of it. I haven’t really people saying things like “Oh hey, you’re a developer? And you like to paint? That doesn’t make sense — you really shouldn’t paint, you’ll won’t be as good of a developer if you do” or “Hey you’re a designer? And you like to cook? Why don’t you concentrate on designing some more and leave the food to the professionals”. Sure, you can point out the difference between something that’s classified as a hobby versus a career, but the line between the two can be pretty thin for people that have passion and/or are skilled at both.

The fact that people see these two particular fields at odds is really… odd… to me. Instead of asking which box you belong in, why not simply ask “what do you do?”