There was a time back in the late 90s when knowing some HTML and CSS secured a techie a place in his country’s web development skill pool. The web in general placed emphasis on the display of nice stuff with content hard coded into html pages so web design – as opposed to development – mattered more than any other skill on the web. But soon enough the game started to change.
In the early 2000, local developers started learning database and server side scripting (PHP, Perl, Coldfusion and their friends). I remember playing with PHP back then in college myself and falling in love with it. I marveled, like other techies, how I could manipulate and display data in so many useful ways. But before we could really hone our skills in the art of real programming, the Content Management Systems (CMS), the ones you could just install on a web server and go live in minutes, took over. They became shortcuts to the end that web techies sought – to get dynamic content on the web.
So popular amoung techies did Joomla and others like it from early in the day (PHPNuke anyone?) become that buying a domain and installing Joomla alone sadly qualified one as a developer. Who needed to learn how to program on the web anymore! They were so amazing a tool (still are by the way) but at the same time such a killer of the hard programming skills needed to code oneself to solutions that qualify a developer as one. And it wasn’t because the developers were lazy. No. Most just needed to make money and this was most efficient way to that end. The market didn’t need any deep custom solution web programming.
And just to clarify, there’s really nothing wrong with CMSes. They are indeed amazing for developers as frameworks for their web applications. They are even more amazing for non-developers who just want to get some content online. Really, you shouldn’t need to be a developer to get some text, images and videos online. They are also a great tool first time devs needing to quickly get something live and feel good and motivated by it to learn the deeper stuff.
But installing web CMSes is not enough for real developers. Software engineers go much further than that, and thankfully there’s increasingly space for them in the market, making the acquisition of these skills worthwhile. And developers don’t even need to just sell their skills locally. The whole world is their marketplace, and if one masters software engineering deep enough, soon enough their individual countries as markets become inadequate.
Here’s a more direct message to ‘developers’ reading this: Installing CMSs just doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to learn how to write code, how to work with data structures, how to write efficient code and how to work in teams. If you’re looking to start or join a startup, the need is even greater.
And besides, why settle for just installing CMSes when you could apply yourself on more challenging and, especially now, more rewarding stuff. We know there’s a market for these skills because a week doesn’t pass that an existing organisation or non-technical startup founder emails us with a “please refer me to a real developer not those pretenders” request.
Yes, fellow techies, more and more people now know there are developers and there are CMS installers, and that getting the right person for the project is important.
Share
Home
22 comments
The other reason we need more developers is that we need local software solutions for local problems. Its high time we start seeing a open source CMS developed by a Zimbabwean, the next Pastel iteration, a linux distro, a browser, a school administration system that are proudly Zimbabwean. This can only be achieved if our developers embrace the hacker culture.
I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel, energy is better spent doing new things – or doing old things in new ways. We need to push the state of the art forward, i.e., we don’t want “Just like XYZ, but made locally”. We absolutely need to have global thinking; thinking local is thinking small.
i can imagine what the world would have been like if the guy who created android had followed you advise or THE GUYS CURRENTLY BUILDING Mozilla Mobile OS or Ubuntu Mobile OS. The world will be poorer if any person follows your advise
They did follow my advice: Android was certainly done differently (hardware agnostic, open source, free license), as was Mozilla Mobile (nee Boot2Gecko: open source, no AppStore, every app is a web app). I hope you didn’t miss the bit where i said
.
The world does not need another Linux distro, you’re better off providing localisation to an existing distro, or a new browser: you’re probably better off writing a new plugin to show your new ideas (see flock). Don’t Repeat Yourself, or others
OK L.S.M Kabweza which side of the bed did you get off of today? You hit the nail on the head
Nice post.It’s more dedication and hard work that makes #Greatness
Great article man, I could not have put it better myself. All the resources to learn are freely available on the internet. People should get into the culture of coming up with their own solutions, instead of taking the lazy route.
That having been said are there any code meetups in Zim where people meetup and share coding tips and strategies to better their craft? I go to a couple here in Cape Town.
i think we need to seriously think about those code meetups!
take the charge bro, its an opportunity for setting up a system
If ‘developers’ are going to be installing CMSes, the very least they could do is learning to write plugins/modules for them. Virtually all deployments are going to have a unique need that will be better solved by custom code.
My own tips:
– learn your way around Linux (you can do this in the comfort of a Virtualbox VM on your windows machine. No excuses)
– Know more than a single programming language. Be well-rounded, know differences between the concepts, and the implementations (in various languages). Java, Python and Ruby are good candidates if you’re web-centric.
– Try out this ‘cloud computing’ thing. Get a free Amazon EC2 micro instance (requires knowledge of Linux), or a free Google App Engine account (has free usage quotas; requires Python or Java knowledge)
– Master CSS, Javascript and ‘HTML5’ features as well. If you know HTML, HTML5 isn’t very difficult. The payoff is more than worth it. (aside: I wish more sites implemented offline support; it’s ridiculously simple to implement)
+1 Though quite lost on what “offline support” you refer to?
Think “Offline GMail”, at least for basic functionality. If client loses connectivity, clicking link to your homepage should still work, for instance. You can go fancy and allow client changes to be stored in browser while offline and sync when connectivity is restored
This can be achieved using fetchmail and dovecot with a browser based user agent.
You misunderstood me, I meant pure HTML5 client-side offline storage (as in entirely within the browser): it was first implemented in Offline GMail using the Google Gears plugin (before broad browser support was available, it is now supported by “most modern browsers”). Better described at http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/offline/whats-offline/#toc-application-cache – but yes, you are absolutely right, it can be implemented in that way if your web-application is email-specific.
got it! Google are genius
I really wish the African Community could appreciate fellow developers. There is a company that I know which developed good systems for good companies like Koala etc but Zimbabwe never supported these guys. They went far to just get on the map of developers. YES there are developers in Zim who create things from scratch. BUT there is not enough support.
We developers (me included) need to also be more active in contributing to the open source community…and this needs to start at home too
Couldnt agree more!!! Well said.
But at times its the clients that have a problem, some will just want some sort of an online brochure detailing their operations, no other functionality, and negotiating with them will make you sound you like to impose a solution for their bsns, and Zimbos dont want that
Why does the writer only refer to web development? Thats not the only form of development. In fact HTML , CSS, Javascript are arguably the easier sides of programming.
I used to say it on Techzim and i would get attacked, until i said each man for himself. I am not going to repeat what i said. “freedom” they called it.
For developers, that’s probably true. For most people, however, who want websites to meet specific goals learning how to code is not necessary. I would say that since you see this need for developers to come up with new solutions, be the first to take action so that others follow your lead. It is a noble idea..
Well put, these posers who go around calling themselves developers when all they can do is install joomla or drupal on a server annoy me no end