There seems to be a lot of confusion in the world today about what it is that web developers are and do. Are they designers? Programmers? Marketers? Business owners? While being a little of all of these is important in the world today, that’s not what web developers really are.

I’m constantly getting requests for quotes on a daily basis for a ton of services I don’t offer. I have a list of services and talk everywhere on the site about what I do offer. Perhaps it’s not an attention-to-content problem, but maybe the general population just doesn’t know how to classify us.

Another example would be those master-of-all ads you see in an alarming amount on job boards. Most of them read something like:

Looking for a ROCKSTAR/NINJA web developer. Should be able to design and code in CSS, XHTML, PHP, ASP, JS, RoR, MySQL, C++ (and every other acronym you can think of). Should also have knowledge of Adobe Flash, Flex, marketing, social media and SEO practices.

My question is, does this person really exist? Is it possible to be extensively knowledgeable in this many areas? And if so, would this person really be called a web developer?

What a web developer is

• A master of at least 1-2 web languages. Preferably HTML, CSS to start.
• A practicer of web standards, semantics and validation. Sorry, but if you can’t take the 2 seconds to validate your HTML in one standard or another (unless there’s a good reason not to) you’re just not a real (good) developer. Same goes for browser compatibility. Unvalidated CSS is acceptable if it’s due to CSS3 techniques.
• Learner of the art of graceful degradation. Not all sites should look the same in every browser. That’s ok.
• A back-end programmer or front-end developer. Developer and programmer can be interchangeable, but I personally refer to the front-end as developing, and the back-end as programming.
• Someone who can work around all programming languages – even if they don’t know the language or have never seen it before.
• Adaptable and able to learn a framework or the basics of another similar language in just a few hours.
• An improver – every site’s code should be better and cleaner than the last.
• Able to provide in-code SEO for no extra cost.
• As important as the designer. A lot of normal clients don’t realize this and will pay big money for a designer, yet skimp on the coding.
• A business person. They are very knowledgeable about what they’re doing. They’re professional. Their business is as much of a business as yours.
• Money-making. We’re in business to make money doing something we love. There’s no shame in that, unlike what you hear these days about “greedy” business people. Without “greedy” business people, would there be jobs?

What a web developer isn’t

• A designer. That being said, the developer should know the basic principles of design, the differences between serif and sans-serif and basic color theory and typography.
• A consultant. I get lots of questions from regular clients about marketing, SEO and other web-related, but non-development related issues.
• All knowing. We can recreate your PSDs, but we can’t possibly know you want A to move, B to roll and C to disappear if you don’t inform us in some way.
• A marketer. Even though a web developer should know basic principles (and must know if they run their own business anyways), web developers probably aren’t the best to go to for marketing work.
• A male, fat, in PJ’s, a geek, a gamer, lazy, weird looking or any other of those wonderful stereotypes we come across. Of course, you could be any one of those things and still be a web developer, but the majority of us are actually good looking, clean and hard-working.
• A ninja or a rockstar…how did those descriptions become so popular??
• Infinite-lingual. There’s simply too many web languages out there for us to know every one well.
• Cheap. While there may be people in India charging $1 an hour (yes I’ve seen that more than once), you’re not going to get that cheap with a real developer (count on $50+). If you knew how many clients came to us complaining how terrible the <$30 an hour developer did or how many times we’ve had to fix that developer’s mistakes (for more than what they would’ve paid to just choose a better developer in the first place) you’d think twice about that.
• Available 24/7. Most developers keep normal business hours and aren’t available during weekends or nights.
• Scary. We know you don’t know the web like we do, and that’s ok. We won’t scare you with tech names, but instead will work hard to explain everything in normal speak.

What do you think a web developer is or isn’t?

Photo by by Thomas Hawk

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