I only have a few friends in the industry that studied design-related major, back in the university days. Take Kuswanto of Zeusbox Studio for example. He’s a great illustrator and icon artist. He surprisingly was studying biological stuffs and I guess it is obviously far from design.
Before I took a plunge to the design industry. I was a full time programmer and it was the only job type I ever wanted since day one as a computer science student. It was more like a dream come true.
Web design was just a hobby to me. Love the blended art, technology and the fancy things since the rise of the internet.
I never regret the decision for not studying design. Despite I’m really bad with drawing, I found out that having a non-focus / spreading speciality, could turn out to be a great benefits in the industry.
Based on my experience, there are three types of website developer (this includes designer and programmer), and here they are …
Web Programmer
This usually called the "pure coder" and they are the Jedi Master of backend (ex: PHP, JSP), or the frontend (AJAX, JavaScript libraries such as: jQuery, script.aculo.us, MooTools). And they also good on database scheme & strategy.
Famous role model: Matt Mullenweg
Web Designer
They handles only the artistic side, and some other visual-and-feel things of the website. They do anything but codes. Usually the person in this category is really good at colors, user interface, Adobe Photoshop ~ Illustrator, pencil and paper sketching.
Famous role model: Dan Cederholm
In Between
This is the category where the person is mastering design and code. Basically they are the magician of the website development. From handling website design, to fully object oriented backend code.
They also have good skills in frontend which is XHTML authoring and Javascript visual fancy effects.
Famous role model: Shaun Inman
I was a Web Programmer, and long story short - right now I’m In Between but not really 50%, but 80% towards to Web Designer. Guess I should consider to take design courses.
Currently, this blog is maintained by 
Don’t you have something more important thing to do..like preparing your marriage with your beautiful fiance? :p
Btw, between those 3 type of web developer you can put me on web designer side (well at least I can slice PSD to HTML :D). Besides I hate (actually I can’t) do programming stuff hehehe.
Ah the wed is just around the corner, thanks for reminding!
But Mr. Ivan force me to write up ;) http://www.mangoaddict.com/2008/08/14/my-thoughts-on-apple/#comment-364
For hiring a person for a web project, I must pick someone in between. It doesn’t matter which end is stronger. It’s so difficult working with a coder with no artistic appreciation, and it is so hard to tell a designer about how hard it is to lay it out.
Both ends must understand each other. Just like my true profession..structural engineer vs. architects :)
The magician is everywhere, and yes they are perfect for simple (and small) projects.
Recently we’ve been partnering with pure coder and pure designer. They can collaborate beautifully with the In-between as the project manager.
I never knew that your true profession, please tell more about it.
I am a full-time structural engineer, and an internet (+mango) addict part-timer. Since I belong to telecommunication industry, I analyze structures such as cellular towers. Basically, we are building infrastructures for wireless companies (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, etc). The last one I did was for AirCell, so that people can use internet on airplanes.
Tapi aku dah bosen pol … bakal pulang taon depan :)
Whoa, telco hardware sophisticated industry!
When you’re home next year, contact me if you want to set-up network technology business ;)
Oii, ikutttt. Ini anak sukanya mojok berdua mulu :p
I won’t be in Telcom Industry anymore though. But I will play internet, a lot!
Want to join? Sure … We will be an “OPEN” Company ..so we’ll be doing a lot of partnerships.
*Yang di bawah … mau ikutan apa toh kamu …
i’m not sure if i’m classified as a web designer or ‘in between’, but i’m in bad need to learn some frontend javascript because usually i can’t rely those stuff on web programmers. probably means being a pure web designer would make it hard on yourself.
I still don’t agree, JS master is a designer, they are more like a “Front-End Developer”. Don’t you think?
Definitely in-between for me! Sway more towards code but I much prefer designing! Need to get the creative juices flowing
so THAT’s what were called! lol…Im trying to be in between because I enjoy both aspects and I’d say I’m ok at both…but I’m going to university and taking both design and computer science classes in hopes of becoming…an “in-betweener”
Gianni, wow you’re must be a good time manager for taking both design and computer science classes!
i’m and in betweeny :)
So, I’m a web designer then. Yay!
gw apaan yak!? gak ketiga2nya keknya :(
Yay, you are those three types + photographer ;)
Excellent article! I’ve been thinking to write something like this since I first saw this article http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DeveloperDesigner.aspx. But I wouldn’t do better :)
Anyway, can we name this “in-between”? There is a lot of misunderstanding when talking about this subject. When I say “I’m a web developer” people often say “Aah, web designer” or “Programming, eh?”. Even if you search job ads you’ll see that some require flash/photoshop/illustrator and others php/asp.net/web services for the same position - web developer (or whatever they call it).
I (really) wish I can design .. I’m all emboss and dropshadow designer :))
I wish you’ll stay to be pure coder, ever…
kekeke.
Loe jangan ambil kerjaan orang donk! Coding aja loe ah …
Problem with the inbetweener is that they are rarely good at either or. The really skilled ones are hard to come by, but when they do, they are usually superstars. (I work at istockphoto, we have a couple of em…). Keep up the good blog. I wrote more on grids too since you demanded more info, lol.
I started off as a designer but became frustrated when the coder told me this and that could not be done or stripped my design to the bare bones taking away what made it good. Since I learned code I now know design layouts can be difficult to code but I have the motivation to make them work.
Honestly i think this is the same everywhere.
Usually developers wont have much design skills and designers usually aint good coders.
And those who are in between command the highest salary. (Try co ordinating projects between a developer and designer and you will know why)
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