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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

But it's not the same sort of skill as, say, doing low-level graphics programming, or database query optimization. Just because you're a programmer doesn't mean you're a web developer.

It's like saying that it doesn't make sense for a carpenter to live in a house they didn't build, or for a heart surgeon not to pull out his own wisdom teeth.

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To be fair, it probably doesn't make sense for a dental surgeon to pull his own teeth either.

If you're a halfway decent programmer, deploying a simple blog is trivial. There are many existing solutions that don't even require you to write a single line of code, and the problem is simple enough that you could write the entire thing yourself.

> If you're a halfway decent programmer, deploying a simple blog is trivial.

The first thing a halfway decent programmer learns is to not reinvent the wheel. I could implement some json library, but I have better things to do. I could deploy and manage wordpress, but that would be a waste of my time.

This relates to a post from the last couple days where a potential game programmer got lost in some random issue instead of focusing on making a fun game. When blogging, content should be the focus, not managing a website.

I like keeping what I do on my website because it is my property and I would never populate other people's websites with my content, unless I got enough money for it.

I disagree. It doesn't matter what kind of coder you are, at some point you always deal with a shell. And setting up a blog on bare metal is done in few minutes on a shell. If you have never faced a shell or a remote server as a developer then you should find a toy project to do so. It's not the worst skill to have.

Moreover, I wouldn't see basic HTML or CSS as specific knowledge. This is something every coder knows (like English), of course not advanced layout stuff like Flexbox but the basic of HTML and CSS are common knowledge. And you do not need React, Webpack or any advanced stuff to make a simple SSG blog. You even don't need to understand HTML or CSS if you just stick with the standard templates. Just Markdown.

Edit: Why the downvote?

> Moreover, I wouldn't see basic HTML or CSS as specific knowledge. This is something every coder knows (like English), of course not advanced layout stuff like Flexbox but the basic of HTML and CSS are common knowledge

i work in a building full of embedded developers who wouldn't know a css selector if it bit them on the ass.

what use is it to any of them?

> i work in a building full of embedded developers who wouldn't know a css selector if it bit them on the ass.

Maybe, maybe not. Even embedded coders face HTML/CSS at some point when their embedded devices incorporates a webserver for some admin interface which sends HTML/CSS to the world (e.g. a router). Or they have create an API doc for their newly created embedded system, on the web. There are many examples.

What I am saying is that HTMl/CSS is ubiquitous in tech and besides, not that hard to grok compared to code in Assembly or C for an embedded system. And again they don't need HTML or CSS anyway. They just need to know a bit of bash, git, Markdown and a SSG of their choice.

> Maybe, maybe not.

uh it isn't some sort of weird toss-up? i'm referring to specific people who i know.

> Even embedded coders face HTML/CSS at some point when their embedded devices incorporates a webserver for some admin interface which sends HTML/CSS to the world (e.g. a router). Or they have create an API doc for their newly created embedded system, on the web. There are many examples.

there's a whole world of embedded stuff that doesn't have admin interfaces, doesn't have APIs, etc. you can concoct increasingly strained examples all day long, and there are still folks doing work you didn't realize was even a thing, who'll have long and profitable careers without touching a line of CSS.

Ok, it's hard to imagine that such people exist but I believe what you say. You are right, they should rather use Medium.

I'll use my Father as an example. He works for Autodesk, before that he worked for Revit (when they were a tiny startup before Autodesk bought them out). He writes code in C++ mostly (I think some C# these days). He doesn't use HTML or CSS, and has never learned either. Not because he can't, just because there's not been any point and because the amount of effort that would take is large enough to not be worth it. Why spend several hours or days of extra effort just for a blog post? Not to mention the extra money needed to buy a domain and hosting.

I don't understand this, because C++ or C# are both high-level programming languages. HTML, on the other hand, is simple markup language. I'd think it would take somebody on that level a weekend to learn it, possibly a few weeks or a month to be confident writing it.

I think you are missing the point. He is not saying that his father can't do it, he is saying there is no point in his father learning it.

Edit: words go in a specific order.

I work with a lot of kernel dev type people, you may find it hard to imagine but there are a lot of people that only program in c, maybe python.

I even know a lot of fortran only programmers. If you think html and css are common you might want to expand your scope of programmers, there is a lot of people that don't need or want to know about web programming.

I haven't touched HTML since somewhere around v. 3.x... I haven't ever bothered to really learn CSS. I am retired, but I once write software to model traffic.

Just another datapoint for you.

I can install Wordpress and a theme. I have no idea how to really customize said theme. I could learn, I am not feeling compelled to do so.

HTML is really not all that ubiquitous. The breadth of the technological world is wide... In any case, from my point of view the question is not "could I put together a virtual server with some kind of blogging software on it?" (I'm sure I could) but "is that the most interesting/important/worthwhile thing for me to do with my limited time?" and "do I want to give myself the ongoing maintenance chore of ensuring that the server and software stack is up to date with security updates?". Those two things are why I host my rather-intermittently-updated technical blog on wordpress.com.

Having a Webserver is not that simple. Even if you knew HTML and CSS good enough to make decent looking blog, there are many things that are not so simple:

- installing the basics. Why would I know if I should use Apache or Nginx. The internet is no help for that and while both are easy to use, it is not obvious how to publish a blog. You might also need other systems such as a MySQL db if you want to use Wordpress to publish. And I wouldn't expect a Postgres to know how to use MySQL

- securing the server. I would not expect everyone to know how to secure a server. There are some many things that are hard. Even iptables is not easy if you use it for the first time (don't get my started on firewalld). More advanced things such as AppArmour or SELiunx are freaking overwhelmingly when you use it for the fist time and only use a shell. Those things take time to learn and get right. It is useless if you set up the ip tables correctly but save them incorrectly so they flush after a reboot.

- keeping the server up to date. It requires discipline to active look for updates and act once they are discovered. Why would a embedded programmer want to bother.

- price: while 5 bucks is not much for many of us, it adds up, Especially when you have many such little things. Secondly, such a cheap server might not be enough. You need backups which requires additional work. Furthermore, if you do not use a static website, the hacker news front page could quickly overwhelm such a little server (it might even be hard with a static website).

These are all reasons why one should not use their own server for that. If you want to learn a lot about web servers, having a blog is a good and valuable start but I would never expect anyone to do that

That's why we developed Strattic: it allows users to enjoy the flexibility and power of WordPress without the need to maintain and secure servers. Strattic publishes the site as static and serverless, and the origin site is only available to the site owner. It's like a static site generator, but for WordPress. Strattic is currently in beta: https://strattic.com.

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