So for tonight's post on Jason Whittakers Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide, I need to tell you a story. I was one of the last group of people who went through the Navy's electronics training "old school". What I mean by that, is that we learned it all. We learned in months what was equivalent to a 4 year college degree in electronics. It was intense, but I learned the theory behind how it all worked. I learned what resistors did, capacitors, transistors, and I learned the formulas for figuring out what size of resistor or other components were needed to make things work. I learned binary theories, what "and" "nand", "or", and "nor" gates did. That if you put two "1"s in to a certain kind of gate, you got a "1" out. I learned how to troubleshoot circuits using specialized equipment down to the component level. I learned the theories behind crypto gear, I learned how to be an electronics technician "old school". Soon after I went through, they changed the way they approached electronics training, and they made it about board swapping. It was supposedly a quicker, more efficient way to troubleshoot in the field. But what did they learn? They didn't learn any MacGyver style tricks. If they troubleshot down to the board and then found they didn't have that board on hand, they couldn't take it any further because they did not have the skills in their toolkit necessary to do so.
So what does any of this have to do with Whittaker's text? Whitthaker is taking both approaches in his presentation or explanation of developing for the web. Tonight's chapter, chapter 4, on "Designing for the Web" really drove this point home for me. He discussed principles, text, links, images, color, tables, forms, and layout, and he basically discusses how these things should be handled using CSS, or cascading style sheets. But before he explains how to do this, he describes how this would be done via HTML coding, or "old school style". At one point, Whittaker argues that he "would not recommend trying to construct by hand in raw code, although it is important to understand the HTML in order to troubleshoot and be clear what you are trying to achieve" (70). This is exactly the type of MacGyver tricks that everyone needs up their sleeves to be able to fix problems with confidence and skill. Sure, it is easier to swap out a board then it is to find the tiny resistor or transistor that needs to be replaced, but if you do not have the board, you are at a loss. Knowing the logic and reason behind electronics or HTML coding help you to understand the easier way of doing things, while allowing you to do things "old school" if required.
So what does any of this have to do with Whittaker's text? Whitthaker is taking both approaches in his presentation or explanation of developing for the web. Tonight's chapter, chapter 4, on "Designing for the Web" really drove this point home for me. He discussed principles, text, links, images, color, tables, forms, and layout, and he basically discusses how these things should be handled using CSS, or cascading style sheets. But before he explains how to do this, he describes how this would be done via HTML coding, or "old school style". At one point, Whittaker argues that he "would not recommend trying to construct by hand in raw code, although it is important to understand the HTML in order to troubleshoot and be clear what you are trying to achieve" (70). This is exactly the type of MacGyver tricks that everyone needs up their sleeves to be able to fix problems with confidence and skill. Sure, it is easier to swap out a board then it is to find the tiny resistor or transistor that needs to be replaced, but if you do not have the board, you are at a loss. Knowing the logic and reason behind electronics or HTML coding help you to understand the easier way of doing things, while allowing you to do things "old school" if required.
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