I’ve found that most Web developers who didn’t emerge from computer programming backgrounds have serious complexes over whether or not they’re “real” developers…

Here’s food for thought, and a bit of metooism too: I’ve found in my eight years online as a professional that the client-side aspect of development has always been, and still is, considered an intern job.

The general wisdom seems to be this: You want to be a web professional? Do JSP, ASP.net or whatever that works server-side and generates HTML, because HTML is so easy that an intern can take care of it, and my server-side framework will generate most of it anyway.

Yeah, right.

One of my fondest memories is of a manager who told me “you’re lucky, here you’ll work with Java people and you’ll be able to learn a real job”.

Six years after she told me that, I’m still on the client side and feeling very comfy in my shoes, thank you. (but I’m in the lucky bunch who are taken seriously in what they are doing – I hear we’re a happy few)

This long rant to say that the craftsmanship required is all the more difficult to advocate for than most people still haven’t realized that state-of-the art HTML and CSS paired with unobtrusive JS together with accessibility in mind is indeed a real job.

We’ve still got a long way to go before it’s recognised as quality craftsmanship.

My way of changing mentalities in my company? Wait for whatever bug pops up (CSS, JS, whatever), and that happens sooner or later. Usually, it’s because of poor contractor material, or framework-generated stuff. Then people come to my office, and rather than giving them the solution I grab my white board and turn teacher, give them some historical facts (box model, anyone?), explain how this relates to that, and try to make them understand what’s wrong.

Then I help them fix the problem for real, all the while insisting heavily on the fact that yes, client-side is a real job. A few teams in my company are beginning to seriously consider having a full-time client-side specialist. (and I do consider this a small but significant victory).

Personally, I brainwash my developers, mwahaha.

There’s much so say, but I’ll keep focus on one aspect in this comment.

In my team, it’s (almost) easy, I set a very high bar about who I hire. It’s as much about aptitude as it is about skill, but mostly aptitude for me could mean someone is willing to pick up the required skills. Quite a lot of educating has to do with psychological interactions, the ability to persuade and to coax. I tease my guys if I find any stray ‘s, and I show them how they could refactor their code so that it becomes cleaner.

During interviews, I ask very pointed questions that tells me a developer’s skill and ability to think on their feet. If they get an answer wrong or less than satisfactory, quite often I use the chance in the interview to teach them what they should already know in order to have qualified for the job that they were seeking. In some twisted way, I prefer to do this so that more developers (than the ones I hire) realise that they are not up to par when they are not, but instead of dropping them a blind note of rejection, they take away some knowledge that would hopefully set them on the right path beyond my encounter with them.

The manager should be trying to give the developers a gentle push in the direction of becoming a “master”. Once they are shown the proverbial “path” it is up to the developer to take it or reject it. More specifically, a combination of sharing knowledge with the developers and showing them how to solve problems and find answers will enable show them what they have to graduate from the ranks of amateur to professional. If that person does not take that path, it’s up to you to either use what they can do, or find someone else.

The developer, on the other hand, needs to have a certain proficiency in these areas to begin with, and has to have the desire to go from craft to career. I don’t believe that changing technology strikes fear into those looking for job security… if one is a responsible professional, he/she is always looking at new technologies that can be applied to what they are doing. It may seem like new technologies pop up out of no where, but they rarely spring up out of no-where overnight. Plus, they should look at the fact that most new technologies have foundations in earlier ones, so if they really focus on their profession, they should already be prepared for whatever the next big thing is.

As for people not taking the job seriously… a “potential” developer would not be potential if he/she didn’t take the job seriously. It would take 15 minutes looking at any job board/salary listing/job demand site to realize that the people who need these positions filled take it seriously enough. And while I don’t have an answer to changing people’s ideas about taking different programming disciplines seriously, both sides should remember that someone can really fantastic things in c, as someone else can write really fantastic things in javascript… but anyone can write crap code in any language.