en_dmitriid

Web programmers are generally viewed as "less-than-programmers". Some even think that they are not programmers at all, come to think of it. Indeed, some think that creating something like Codeproject is a piece of cake. Those same people also think that creating a yet another accounting program in Visual Basic (or, god forbid, VBA) is uber-cool and is worthy of all praise.

Now, why would anybody think that? Huh?

Let's consider the so-called "application programmer". Or even the so-called "systems programmer". All they ever need to know is their favorite programming language (C/C++/Java/Object Pascal...). Well, quite often something like a passing knowledge of SQL comes along and a declarative language to store application settings in (usually the INI file format or XML). In toto - at most three technologies: programming language, SQL, XML, and chances are the programmer will use datasets and MSXML to work with the latter to.

What about the web programmer, then?

• Favorite programming language - one of PHP/Ruby/Perl/Java/C#/Python


• SQL


• HTML


• CSS


• JavaScript (sometimes with an added bonus of JSON)


• and quite often XML

Also throw in the bag the fact that web programming is originally and immediately a client-server programming. Most of application programmers don't even have a clue about what's that all about.

So, what we have in the end is that the despised web programmers actually know and do the following:

• They program client-server applications easily and effortlessly


• They combine imperative and declarative programming seamlessly


• They have a more-than-passing knowledge about about non-compatible and non-intersecting technologies and know how to combine them

And as soon as the project starts to grow... We have data replication, distributed servers and son on and so forth...

And still web programming is perceived to be a child's play whereas grown-ups are off working on their "serious" technologies which are supposedly to hard for a web-programmer to comprehend. Well, think again, lads. It is we, web porgrammers, who look down on you because most of the technologies most of you are just beginning to toy with have already been seen, learned and taken to use by us.

BTW, this discrimination against web programming is exactly the reason why web programmers are so behind on tools and libraries. It is only recently that decent tools have sprung up all over the place (such as Ruby on Rails, Django, Seam, Prado and others)

Now that's a bloody shame if you ask me.