Hello fellows
I have been wondering for a while about learning to code and develop websites as a new skill and future service as freelancer. Well the question is very easy to understand: Should designers learn to code? The only answer is Yes/No. If you are like me you will think… well that’s kind of obvious… and Yes will be the answer but there is a good analysis on the No answer.
Let’s talk about Yes
Today I started a web development course at Udemy (not sure about the quality but it was a bargain tho). I was learning some basics about web development beacause I’m a complete newbie on this field and I don’t have a bloody idea about coding, for example I learned today that web development and code is not programming so there is a lot of people who makes mistakes about that.
This coding thing started no long ago when I was frequently asked by my clients to start making websites and use wordpress, it was a shame because there were good opportunities to make extra money on those contracts. With this client pressure, I decided to get myself involved with userflow and UI design to start making some site mocks which actually turned in a very recurrent activity for me as designer.
All my thoughts about web development are spinning around learning coding to be able to help on real scenarios working with developers. For example, I find very useful to have the knowledge of coding to keep my design ideas restricted by what is possible to make on coding, so I don’t waste time making wireframes which don’t work.
Let’s put all this together:
- You can make more money by having a coding skill (this is something extra as a designer).
- You can help on real scenarios with a team of developers.
- You can create your own ideas by your self.
Now let’s talk about No
If you thought the only obvious answer here is Yes, well let me just tell you that you can be wrong there too. If you want to help a team of developers to get done some new software product like a website or application then yeah it is very important to know some coding stuff, but what if you are working by yourself creating something a new site? You can achieve this by using Wix or Wordpress without knowing how to code, additionally you can also create whatever you want or desire with high quality visual graphics making an amazing site.
There are also some other software tools as Webflow where you don’t need to know about coding, allowing you to drag and drop, create shapes, change color, use fonts, layout or images on a very easy and friendly way. As a consequence of these new tools you don’t actually need to know about coding to create sites if you want to, with some practice and intuition you will be able to use a correct layout and bingo! You have a professional site.
The last point about No is quite simple… you don’t want to learn to code you can just hire or get someone to do it for you, this could cost you money if you don’t get a friend or some other source to get it done on the right way.
Putting all together:
- You don’t need to “waste” time learning to code now that there are some user friendly tools to develop sites.
- You can pay, hire or make someone else to do the coding for you.
- You can also create your own ideas but possibly this can cost you money.
Final thoughts
In my opinion, I consider learning about coding as a personal goal, it is not a must for a designer to get this is skill because you can jump all this leaning process (possibly boring phase) and get directly to what you want to create. As for myself, I want to invest time to learn it because I do want to take into count all the restrictions when it comes to create a new site, also to be able to participate and give my opinions on the building process the time I’m working with a developer team, and the third point it is because I want to be able to create my own products, this last point could be essential for me now that I want to have a site where I can share my products and my portfolio. It could happen that at the end I will go to some other tool as Webflow to develop my ideas or client projects, but the first step should be to learn the old style.
I want to ask you something… what’s your opinion?
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