<rant><mso>so you would rather use frontpage/dreamweaver to edit your html/xhtml? Wow. I would rather a serious kick in the pants than to use those types of applications to "shortcut" my html/xhtml development. </mso></rant>
***This comment wrote in frontpage***

FrontPage? No.
Expression Web? Yes.

The former adds HTML junk and fluff when entering the designer mode, sometimes breaking the markup especially where there was inline script, whereas the latter is pretty good about being "respectful" about the markup. Same with Visual Studio 2008's ASPX and HTML designer.

Site's down, will be back up tonight, sorry ppl.

I used to use Dreamweaver to lay things out back in the days of table layouts, and then would bring that HTML into Visual Studio.

However, I find them more of a hindrance than help when working on CSS layouts. There's so little HTML in a good CSS layout and it makes enough sense visually, designer tools simply become leaky abstractions.

The site is still down. Maybe if you used notepad like a real man, your website wouldn't crash unexpectedly.

/ l33t

I think that you're talking about this: http://xkcd.com/378/, or possibly this: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html. I personally like the 'chaos' approach from the xkcd cartoon. It's very zen.

brianjlowry, it was down due to the incompetence of the ISP to keep the connection up, not due to markup. :P

.. before anyone argues, yes, it's a connection issue, it doesn't matter if you succeeded in getting an error message. The site is reverse proxied.

I agree with most of what the article says. Also keep in mind that sometimes sophisticated tools hide the details. So for the beginners it is always better to start at the simplest level in order to understand what is going on under the hood. But they shouldn't get stuck there. Once you understand the principles you should move on and see how good tools can make you better and more productive. This applies to more than tools as in IDEs. A programmer should understand how the processor works and code a bit in assembly instead of jumping directly to C#. Maybe then I wouldn't meet so many young pups who have no clue how the stack works. ;)

A friend who worked on operating systems for IBM said he just uses notepad.

I thought of all the tools that help me get my job done: auto-complete, go-to-references, shift+f6 to build, refactoring fields and methods and classes, running unit tests within the IDE, code snippet insertion, the list goes on. Even simple things like finding out what line you're on and what column you're on...notepad lacks.

In all honestly, I'd lose 80%+ efficience without these tools.

@JudahGabriel
Now I understand why IBM software is so awesome. :D

@stimpy77,

I was just kidding about notepad. Good article, and I agree with most points aside from the designer mode one. I think it is evil and encourages drag and drop markup.

Rawness is good as long as it doesn't become a purpose in itself. I like to know how to do things without the many layers tools lay on top. But then I like to get productive. As long as I know what happens under the surface I am happy to use tools.

There are a few things that spell "newbie". There are a few things that spell "lazy". There are a few things that spell "asshole".

Newbie: Let me drag a label control to this form. (for *everything*... because I dont know HTML), every drop down on the page causes a postback (for no reason at all)

Lazy: Embedded SQL (not parametrized even)

Asshole: Forget the IDE... I use vi for all my editing!

And then there's things that spell "productive".

I use the IDE and the tools Microsoft provides when it is useful to do so. The designer makes things very nice.

Also, it should be worth saying...

Your manager isn't paying you to be L33T... he's paying you to get the job done.