The Internet as we know it is structured because of HTML, looks pretty because of CSS, and functions properly because of JavaScript. While this may be a somewhat basic view of web development as it exists today, these three components still reign king over any application or website built to be accessible over the Internet. Sure, there exist languages that generate HTML from a different set of syntax, but the goal of these tools is to make creating HTML easier, not to replace HTML altogether. And sure, most websites use some backend server to do most heavy calculations, but scripts are still needed on the website itself to communicate with this server and then properly display this information.
It’s a testament to the principles of design and abstraction, then, that we are able to create websites through means other than writing lines of code on an otherwise blank text file—especially considering that every instruction on the computer must be rendered as binary at the end of the whole process. Indeed, web creation tools such as Wix and WordPress not only make the website creation process seem visual instead of technical, but they also allow an audience who may not have any experience with web development to have a good chance at successfully creating the product they want. And yet, when many people continue to develop using technical code, and when websites created through this method are generally considered to be more flexible, responsive, and dependable than those created with tools such as the ones above, an outsider may wonder why we need these sorts of visual tools and how they can compete with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript development.
The answer, of course, generally comes down to one thing: technical unapproachability. As mentioned, a functioning website generally needs a multitude of components, and the design of the frontend will likely be only one part of the finished product. Because each of these components will likely communicate in a different way, even if one can design a good set of web pages to display using the languages discussed above, there still may be other components of the product that use different sets of conventions and syntax; each part of the website may therefore require significant time to learn and understand, and this sort of time is often not available in a real workplace.
After all, each new programming language can seem like a cipher to its users, especially to ones who are unfamiliar with the various concepts of computer logic. Along with learning what each keyword in a language does, users may also need to find relevant libraries to import certain functionalities or wrestle with the particulars of a data type within a certain language; this struggle can only increase when someone unfamiliar with coding tries to understand relatively established topics that are nonetheless unintuitive, such as the first element of a list being at the 0 position or a range of 1 to 5 oftentimes returning only four elements, starting at the second. Even though there do exist several tools that can help make coding more approachable, effectively using a programming language to design a complex website can still be difficult and frustrating.
Ultimately, most programming languages are not only hard to use if one doesn’t understand their syntax or conventions—they are also hard to understand if one doesn’t know where to look for or how to comprehend documentation about syntax, library calls, dependencies, and etc. Many languages are built to resemble how the machine thinks rather than the user, and since the user will not be a machine, it requires experience to comprehend the logic. The strengths of these languages instead lie in how much one can get a computer to do if they know the proper code, which is far more than a website creation application such as WordPress—but for many people who want to build basic websites that look good, this is generally not an issue. Instead, what these people want is a visual way to build a website, something that intuitively allows them to add content to a page and see it update correctly, even if the most advanced options are removed. By offering this to users who don’t have the time or experience to code a website by hand, website creation tools like Wix and WordPress therefore fill a strong niche and are able to thrive, even as they exist alongside technical website code.
It’s a testament to the principles of design and abstraction, then, that we are able to create websites through means other than writing lines of code on an otherwise blank text file—especially considering that every instruction on the computer must be rendered as binary at the end of the whole process. Indeed, web creation tools such as Wix and WordPress not only make the website creation process seem visual instead of technical, but they also allow an audience who may not have any experience with web development to have a good chance at successfully creating the product they want. And yet, when many people continue to develop using technical code, and when websites created through this method are generally considered to be more flexible, responsive, and dependable than those created with tools such as the ones above, an outsider may wonder why we need these sorts of visual tools and how they can compete with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript development.
The answer, of course, generally comes down to one thing: technical unapproachability. As mentioned, a functioning website generally needs a multitude of components, and the design of the frontend will likely be only one part of the finished product. Because each of these components will likely communicate in a different way, even if one can design a good set of web pages to display using the languages discussed above, there still may be other components of the product that use different sets of conventions and syntax; each part of the website may therefore require significant time to learn and understand, and this sort of time is often not available in a real workplace.
After all, each new programming language can seem like a cipher to its users, especially to ones who are unfamiliar with the various concepts of computer logic. Along with learning what each keyword in a language does, users may also need to find relevant libraries to import certain functionalities or wrestle with the particulars of a data type within a certain language; this struggle can only increase when someone unfamiliar with coding tries to understand relatively established topics that are nonetheless unintuitive, such as the first element of a list being at the 0 position or a range of 1 to 5 oftentimes returning only four elements, starting at the second. Even though there do exist several tools that can help make coding more approachable, effectively using a programming language to design a complex website can still be difficult and frustrating.
Ultimately, most programming languages are not only hard to use if one doesn’t understand their syntax or conventions—they are also hard to understand if one doesn’t know where to look for or how to comprehend documentation about syntax, library calls, dependencies, and etc. Many languages are built to resemble how the machine thinks rather than the user, and since the user will not be a machine, it requires experience to comprehend the logic. The strengths of these languages instead lie in how much one can get a computer to do if they know the proper code, which is far more than a website creation application such as WordPress—but for many people who want to build basic websites that look good, this is generally not an issue. Instead, what these people want is a visual way to build a website, something that intuitively allows them to add content to a page and see it update correctly, even if the most advanced options are removed. By offering this to users who don’t have the time or experience to code a website by hand, website creation tools like Wix and WordPress therefore fill a strong niche and are able to thrive, even as they exist alongside technical website code.
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