Solutions vs Technology
It seems to me that when I was a bit younger we had different priorities in mind. During my time at the university my main focus was on the solutions I am going to provide. I remember thinking about bio-informatics, transistors, AI as means to an end.
Nowadays when young, bright minds enter our office in order to start their career, their focus is on using Rails, mastering JS or doing NLP.
Responsive design is part of a product goal
Two months ago at SmartWebConf in Bucharest I was arguing that responsive web design is part of a general notion that should encompass all parts of the web development process. You cannot have a responsive experience for your user when you only focus your efforts on the viewport.
In the end, responsive design is part of a solution. We need to have a broader bigger understanding of what we are trying to solve in order to efficiently do so and not find excuses to use the latest and greatest in tech. As Ethan said:
For example, if that app store visibility is a benefit to your business needs and your audience, why not provide both a responsive web site and a native mobile application?
There is a finite set of problems software can solve
Shopify started offering cash registers last month to their customers in order to bridge this offline-online experience gap everyone is having and we stubbornly are trying to solve one sided for the past decade.
I firmly believe that this is the way to go. As Apple showed everyone the combination of software and tangible real life hardware is the only combination capable of truly changing our live paradigms.
Symptoms and the cause
We keep pushing more and more people into the maelstrom of technology enthousiasm. What we need is to help them get out of this current and elevate them to the point where they once again see the initial problem.
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