WDR #2: Web Developers Needed for a Website

Published on November 25, 2008 (↻ June 10, 2024), filed under (RSS feed for all categories).

This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, well-behaved ebook: On Web Development.

The Web Dev Report, issue #2, this time featuring a classic situation.

The Web Dev Report: Web developers needed for a website.
Transcript.
(Back in 2005.)
Guy 2:
How many web developers does it take to build a website?
Guy 1:

?
Guy 2:
Two.
One to build the tables. Another one to calculate the values of the colspan and rowspan attributes.
Guy 1 and Guy 2:
Muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
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About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on November 9, 2024.

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m a contributor to several web standards, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (Please be critical, interpret charitably, and give feedback.)

Comments (Closed)

  1. On November 25, 2008, 21:02 CET, Duluoz said:

    Oh thank God developing large sites with tables was before my time! Funny stuff!

  2. On November 25, 2008, 21:54 CET, Harry Roberts said:

    @Duluoz—same here! Although I did have to build a HTML email last week. I was nearly sick.

  3. On November 25, 2008, 21:57 CET, Kroc Camen said:

    You know your code is messy when your table recursion crashes the browser.

  4. On November 25, 2008, 23:35 CET, Jens Nedal said:

    Oh the times, when browser performance was so laggy, and all because of the underlying (X)HTML structure.

  5. On November 26, 2008, 0:45 CET, Steffen said:

    Back in 2005? I wonder if Guy 1+2 are still laughing in 2008 or if they are too busy writing articles about equal column heights in column layouts.
    Apart from the validity of the table layout approach: My feeling is that even without table layouts there are still too much (common) problems that waste more time than necessary of more than 2 web developers in software projects.

  6. On November 26, 2008, 11:29 CET, Ash said:

    I looked at an employers website in the interview a few years ago and it never stopped loading
 which i thought was weird
 the web guy said he’d ‘heard of CSS’ when i mentioned it as one of my skills
 my head said something along the lines of frame two of the cartoon


  7. On November 28, 2008, 9:27 CET, Jens Oliver Meiert said:

    I knew everyone would love to discuss tables đŸ˜‚

  8. On November 30, 2008, 22:42 CET, Paul@Green Home said:

    Classic stuff. I thought this was going to be a joke about web dev. clients to start with.

  9. On December 30, 2008, 17:25 CET, Amber said:

    Although we have all of the wonderful features now for web designing backed with teams of people to allow a single person to drag and drop features they wish to have on their site
too much has changed to me. I almost miss the simplicity of the basic header|paragraph structure. Although it was nice to mature from the webskins of 98′. Excellent mark-up*. I enjoy the sites that Keep It Simple