Comment by qingcharles
Comment by qingcharles 2 days ago
Andy Bell is absolute top tier when it comes to CSS + HTML, so when even the best are struggling you know it's starting to get hard out there.
Comment by qingcharles 2 days ago
Andy Bell is absolute top tier when it comes to CSS + HTML, so when even the best are struggling you know it's starting to get hard out there.
I'm afraid of what the future will look like 10+ years down the line after we've gutted humans from the workforce and replaced them with AI. Companies are going to be more faceless than they've ever been. Nobody will be accountable, you won't be able to talk to anyone with a pulse to figure out a problem (that's already hard enough). And we'll be living in a vibe coded nightmare governed by executives who were sold on the promise of a better bottom line due to nixing salaries/benefits/etc.
I don't think it will get that bleak, but it still is a good time to build human community regardless. This future only works for a broken society who can't trust their neighbor. You have the power to reverse that if you wish.
This isn't a bootcamp course. I don't think Andy's audience is one trying to convert an HTML course into a career wholesale. It's for students or even industry people who want a deeper understanding of the tech.
Not everyone values that, but anyone who will say "just use an LLM instead" was never his audience to begin with.
How do you measure „absolute top tier“ in CSS and HTML? Honest question. Can he create code for difficult-to-code designs? Can he solve technical problems few can solve in, say, CSS build pipelines or rendering performance issues in complex animations? I never had an HTML/CSS issue that couldn’t be addressed by just reading the MDN docs or Can I Use, so maybe I’ve missed some complexity along the way.
Look at his work? I had a look at the studio portfolio and it's damn solid.
If one asks you "Why do you consider Pablo Picasso's work to be outstanding", then "Look at his work?" is not a helpful answer. I've been asking about parent's way to judge the outstandingness of HTML/CSS work. Just writing "damn solid" websites isn't distinguishing.
To be frank, someone who needs to be told why to appreciate art probably isn't going to appreciate Picasso. You can learn art theory, but you can't just "learn" someone's life, culture, and expression. All the latter is needed to appreciate Picasso.
But I digress.
Anyways, I can't speak for the content itself, but I can definitely tell on the javascript coirse from the trailer and description that they understand the industry and emphasize how this is focused towards those wanting a deep dive on the heart of web, not just another "tutorial on how to use newest framework". Very few tech courses really feel like "low level" fundamentals these days.
Thank you for returning back to the original question. Being a good educator is something that can actually make someone "top tier", I agree.
On the other topic, I do not agree, as you have just proven: you explain very well why you appreciate Picasso. You thought I (or anybody) needed to be told why I/they should appreciate Picasso/OP. I don't care about that. But I'm very much interested in other peoples reasoning behind their appreciation, especially when I consider something - like HTML and CSS – to be neither very complicated, nor complex. On the other hand: that's what we love about Lumpito: simplicity. Right?
Being absolute top tier at what has become a commodity skillset that can be done “good enough” by AI for pennies for 99.9999% of customers is not a good place to be…
When 99.99% of the customers have garbage as a website, 0.01% will grow much faster and topple the incumbents, nothing changed.
Hmm. This is hand made clothes and furniture vs factory mass production.
Nobody doubts the prior is better and some people make money doing it, but that market is a niche because most people prioritize price and 80/20 tradeoffs.
> Nobody doubts the prior is better
Average mass produced clothes are better than average hand made clothing. When we think of hand made clothing now, we think of the boutique hand made clothing of only the finest clothing makers who have survived in the new market by selling to the few who can afford their niche high-end products.
As we see with tech, mass production isn't an instant advantage in this market. In fact, something bespoke has a higher chance to stand out here than most other industries.
And no, I don't think people are seeking demand for AI website slop the way they do for textiles. Standing out is a good way to get your product out there compared to being yet another bloated website that takes 10 seconds to load with autoplay video generic landing text.
I'd liken it to Persona 5 in the gaming market. No one is playing a game for its UI. But a bespoke UI will make the game all the more memorable, and someone taking the time for that probably pjt care into the rest of the game as well (which you see on its gameplay, music, characters, and overall presentation).
I agree with all those points. But I also think there is a huge number of small business sites where AI CSS is good enough and sometimes might actually be better.
And that market may be a good chunk of existing contract work.
A lesson many developers have to learn is that code quality / purity of engineering is not a thing that really moves the needle for 90% of companies.
Having the most well tested backend and beautiful frontend that works across all browsers and devices and not just on the main 3 browsers your customers use isn't paying the bills.
If you're telling a craftman to ignore their craft, then you're falling on deaf ears. I'm a programmer, not a businessman. If everyone took the advice of 'I don't need a good website' then many devs would be out of business.
Fact is there's just less businesses forming, so there's less demand for landing sites or anything else. I don't see this as a sign that 'good websites don't matter'
> When 99.99% of the customers have garbage as a website
When you think 99.99% of company websites are garbage, it might be your rating scale that is broken.
This reminds me of all the people who rage at Amazon’s web design without realizing that it’s been obsessively optimized by armies of people for years to be exactly what converts well and works well for their customers.
>it might be your rating scale that is broken.
Or it could mean that most websites are trash.
>it’s been obsessively optimized by armies of people for years to be exactly what converts well and works well for their customers.
Yeah, sorry. I will praise plenty of Amazon's scale, but not their deception, psychological manipulation, and engagement traps. That goes squarely in "trash website".
I put up with a lot, but the price jumpsa was finally the trigger i needed to cancel prime this year. I don't miss it.
>it’s been obsessively optimized by armies of people for years to be exactly what converts well and works well for their customers.
which can easily be garbage. it only has to be not garbage enough to not cause enough customers to shift enough spending elsewhere
Are they successful companies despite a bad websote, or companies successful because they knew where to stop cutting corners that lead to success?
I suspect it's the former.
Struggling because they're deliberately shooting themselves in the foot by not taking on the work their clients want them to take. If you don't listen to the market, eventually the market will let you fall by the way side.
I don’t doubt it at all, but CSS and HTML are also about as commodity as it gets when it comes to development. I’ve never encountered a situation where a company is stuck for months on a difficult CSS problem and felt like we needed to call in a CSS expert, unlike most other specialty niches where top tier consulting services can provide a huge helpful push.
HTML + CSS is also one area where LLMs do surprisingly well. Maybe there’s a market for artisanal, hand-crafted, LLM-free CSS and HTML out there only from the finest experts in all the land, but it has to be small.