Web Design Methods: The NYTimes.com gets it.

First off, allow me to say one thing..

THANK YOU.

I can't stress how important it is to hear things like this (full article here) when I work as a professional web designer and developer in an area where "web design" is still stuck in the early 90s (yes, that is a legitimate competitor still in business in the area that I just linked to).

I have been hand coding my websites for a number of years now, and let me tell you, once you get comfortable with it, I find no good reason to use WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editors like Dreamweaver except for source control.

For those of you who complain that managing large, complicated websites becomes too much of a burden to be hand coded feasibly, remember this - there is no good WYSIWYG editor for the high quality software that is out today (such as that fancy web browser you use), so why should we skimp on the quality of our websites? I myself studied programming in college, and independently studied x86 Assembly - managing code much, much more complicated than your run of the mill corporate markup and stylesheets. No fancy drag-and-drop system for myself and my fellow coders.

Be strong and actually learn to do your job, rather than take shortcuts that end up affecting the quality of your work. There are times and places for WYSIWYG editors, but in the world of professional web design (especially contracted design), ditch Dreamweaver and grab a good text editor or IDE.

-WFL