The Jason Salas Experience

I've been mentoring our summer interns for the past few weeks, and recently I've given them some fun projects to work on relative to modern-day web development. Basically, I'm giving students that signed up to learn how a real-world news operation works the chance to do some UI development for our site, to be integrated with data from our CMS and published as publicly-accessible exhibits. Since most are web savvy, they're loving the "work".

BUT - I'm floored that not a one knows how to do basic HTML and CSS work manually. In this day and age of MySpace, Xanga, WordPress, Blogger and everyone-and-their-dog's-got-a-personal-page-with-some-platform, the core skill of being able to compose hypermedia by hand is evidently a lost art. Not that this is ruining our productivity...my crew is pulling up URLs I didn't even know existed to test, copy, sample and code designs way faster than I ever could. I've even added a bookmark or two to my own list when they're not looking. I chalk it up as an acceptable sacrifice of progress.

I remember when I got into the game in 1994, we didn't have HTML authoring tools or IDEs. Then along came an entire generation of FrontPage freaks and Dreamweaver dorks, completely ignorant about the innerworkings of a web document without those respective software products. But apps did get done faster, strictly conforming to emerging web standards and arguably better looking. I'm an old skool purist, so I expect people to be familiar with, if not fluent in, core technologies.

I guess in retrospect I shouldn't be too surprised. I've seen virtuoso guitarists that can play brilliantly but aren't able to read a single note of printed music.