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General Discussion

Posted by christopher walsh
christopher walsh
10,763 Points

programmer vs designer

What does a programmer do, that a web designer doesnt do?

I've started off treehouse with the hopes of becoming a web designer. But as I try different lessons and courses, it seems like programming is more direct and uncluttered for my thinking.

so if I focus on programming, what job titles would I apply for as a self taught programmer. lets say I learn javascript, swift and php. what would I do for a agency, where I just have to know programming??

1 Answer

Samuel Webb
Samuel Webb
25,370 Points
Samuel Webb
Samuel Webb
25,370 Points

All a "designer", in the purest sense of the word, does is make the user experience practical and pretty. A programmer makes web applications actually work. There are a ton of different job titles. Do a google search on "javascript jobs" or "swift jobs" or "php jobs" and you'll see all the different job titles. Basically, you'll mostly find a bunch of jobs working on the back end of a website(php, node.js), iOS development(swift) and some front end stuff(javascript).

A lot of jobs pretty much mix designer and developer(programmer) into one job. For an agency job, you'll need to look up the specific agency to get details on exactly what they want.

Samuel Webb
Samuel Webb
25,370 Points

I may have been a little light on what a designer completely does.

christopher walsh
christopher walsh
10,763 Points

I guess Im just unknowing of what happens in the back end of a sit, that makes it its own job.

Samuel Webb
Samuel Webb
25,370 Points

The back end is what actually makes a web application function. Let's take Treehouse for example. All of the posts and comments are stored in a database. The only way to access that database, to store and retrieve information, is to use a server side(back-end, programming) language. When I hit the Post comment button, I'll be making a request to the server to store the information in the database. The programming language will then take the information and store it in the database. It will then retrieve the post from the database, along with all the other comments, format it into html and then forward it to the browser to be displayed back to you. Also, I will be rerouted back to this page(updated) to be able to see the comment I just posted.

Another function dealt with by a back-end language is the whole fact that we're able to log in. All of that information is also stored in a database. It is saved and retrieved in a similar manner. Think about all social media sites(Twitter, Facebook), blog sites(Tumblr), sharing sites(YouTube, Photobucket) and tons more. Pretty much everything that you can do on those sites is dealt with by a back end language.

Someone who is explicitly and only a designer won't deal with any of that stuff. They'll be responsible for things like where the navbar is placed, how many videos to show per page, how the comments are formatted, any interesting page animations, the design of the logo, the color scheme... things like that.