Easy for whom? - a minor rant about help from frameworks

Some people think that programming should be hard while others, like me, quite like the idea of anyone being able to build things, especially web sites. To me the fact that either of my housemates (non IT types) could probably build a website this evening if they so choose is great. And to be honest if they did I’d be unlikely to complain about the code or the programme they chose to build it with (Ok, I would, but that’s me and I’d like to pretend I wouldn’t.)

It’s pretty unlikely however that either of them, or any beginnner, would go along the route of choosing say ASP.NET or Ruby on Rails for that first site. Which leads me to some sort of assumption – that both of these are for experts and professionals. There are other facets which could be used to back up this argument but I dont want to go on – rails making use of the command line (in very cool ways) or ASP.NET requiring IIS configuration for a start. Not something I fancy talking non experts through to be fair.

Using that assumption brings me nicely to helpers. Both are frameworks that try (and in may places succeed) in making life easier for developers. This is a good thing. What’s not so good is where this goes too far, in my opinion. ASP.NET linkButtons are simply Evil. No questions. At All. Stop using them. Now. Rails wades in as well with it’s reliance, when it comes to certain controls, on inline Javascript. Did someone not get the memo?

As good web standards people we have divided content from presentation. Behaviour from both (sort of). Now we have great (in both senses of the word) frameworks coming along and riding roughshod over our labour of love to make the web a better place. Making the developers life easier, but impacting negatively on the end users. Such wide ranging and powerful tools for experts need not treat all users as experts in everything. ASP.NET (or Ruby on Rails) does it so it must be OK? cannot be allowed to undo good works.

Lots of similar talk abounds at the moment, with certainly some light in some of these areas showing through. Visit Dan and Jeremy for more.

end Rant – mmm Rails