As I am sure we are all aware, the internet is “getting old” now and it seems like its time to move on.

I remember when I first tried to design a website, all you needed to know was plain old HTML with a few netscape extras for the design. As time progressed (and MS become “internet-interested”) the IE extensions were added and pretty much every site on the web had a “best viewed with…” logo or a browser detection routine. Then, towards the end of the last century all manner of “new” things were developed. PHP became mainstream, java was everywhere and things that had previously only been done by arcane perl scripts were almost the required standard on web pages.

Now, as people start to talk about Web 2.0 (horrendous phrase and who ever uses it for real should be publically punished) there is an almost dizzying list of technologies people are expected to be competent in – the old alphabet soup of Perl, HTML, CSS, PHP and SQL have been added to by such mouthfulls as ASP, .NET, JS, JSP, PSP, CFML, JSON, XML, AJAX, Ruby, Rails, Python and many more (Cake for example…) – not to mention IPv6…..
Is this a sign of a developed industry or is it pure madness.

There is a certain amount of hype around this new era of technology and sometimes it is reminiscent of the dot-com bubble hype, but there is a good chance the IT / Web industry as a whole is robust enough now to survive a crash. That said, what effect can this technological race have on the workforce as a whole, or companies (agencies etc) that hire staff for web design?

Imagine this – you are a web design agency about to hire a new member of staff. What qualifications do you ask for? Obviously s/he needs an innate understanding of HTML but what about the rest? What qualifications can be considered relevant in such a fast moving industry?

Continuing the example, if you get a candidate who graduated with a BSc in computer science a year ago are they any use to you? Possibly not. There is a good chance that thier web design / programming lectures will cover “old” subjects and their knowledge of (for example) Ruby/RAILS is the same as my cats.

What alternatives do you have? There are always insanely keen hobbyists who will self-teach the cutting edge technologies. When it comes to hiring them, though, what can you ask for as evidence of their abilities? They wont have certificates from (real) education establishments and there is a fair chance that what they do have was knocked up by one of their mates. You can ask for portfolios, which is probably the best idea, but without spending time examining the back end code you have no idea if they simply cut and pasted “Uncle Bob’s Cool WebSite Script” or made it themselves. Also, if you want a programmer you run the risk of being influenced by the site design (and we all know how highly graphic artists are rated….)

Some UK educational establishments offer web design courses (eg, the Open University’s Certificate In Web Applications Development) but these date faster than the course can be run. While it is good for your potential staff to know how to load balance a webserver, this is not the same as being able to design an AJAX application which uses ruby / python for server side data manipulation.

Where does this leave the industry and companies then? Do you hire staff and pay for their training every time something new is developed (or they leave to Bigger and Better PLC)?
My initial suspicions are that, despite the hype, all the “new” technologies are over-rated and amount to very little in the great scheme of things. I have designed Ruby applications with Rails (although not many) and, to be honest, it was poor, hard to upload, hard to get working on the server and hard to make accesible.

AJAX is good, and there are some excellent implementations of it. However it suffers from the curse of JavaScript. People browse with it turned off (killing the AJAX) and people use browsers that cant handle it (also killing the AJAX).

The list continues.

Each client / project will have its own problems and solutions. If you arent sure, take a look at how many web hosts allow Ruby or python. See how many have ASP implementations (of each type) and of those that do see how many run it along with other technologies you actually want. How many hosts provide CFML / JSP / PSP functionality?

Remember, your customers will probably be using a host (maybe one you tell them) so they will be under the same technological limits.

Once you have this data, compare it to how many hosts will offer Perl / PHP / MySQL.

In my mind, if nothing else, that shows where the main effort in knowledge should lie. Its great if you can do a cool AJAX mapping application. But its no use when some one visits with JS turned off and (most of the time) spiders wont index your content.

On the web, like most other things. Keep it simple.

Tags: AJAX, AJAX Tutorials, Web 2.0, JavaScript, Technology,Web Design, Perl, PHP