Re: GUI vs Hand, Was: estimating the cost of building a web site

[Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- jci -dot- com]

>You could end up
>with more than 3 days to set up the tool in a WYSIWYG environment as well.
>After all, if you are using a client/employer PC and your development
>environment is Dreamweaver, you can't legally get working until you get a
>license and get someone to pay for it.

Bad example. I can be up and running legally on DreamWeaver on any site
within 30 minutes of getting my hands on the PC (and that's allowing for
lots of waiting). If I forget to have my CD with me (which contains both a
PC and a Mac version) I can simply D/L it from the Macromedia website. It's
called a 30-day demo and it's fully featured just time-limted.

Now that it's installed, I can begin work, and the site has 30 days to get
me a "real" copy.

Really, this is one of those religious wars that no one's going to change
their mind on. If you're used to using a tool, you already have workarounds
for all the problems the tool carries with it. For those using text
editors, the workarounds are called macros. And again, someone fluent in
the text editor can remember all those arcane macros, while someone using a
different text editor would be lost at sea. And if you're used to
hand-coding, you have an idea what the layout will look like even though
you haven't seen it at all.

Notice the recurring theme? It's what you're used to. Whatever you're used
to is faster than whatever you're not used to. And, if you take the
up-front time to become used to something else, you'll soon be faster with
it than with your previous choice.

I used to hand-code a lot. Now I rarely do. My time is too valuable to
waste on doing that. I rough in with a tool, then smooth over the code
using perl or something similar. I find this approach takes me far less
time, especially in the early stages of a design, when I don't know what's
going to go where. I can "blue sky" a dozen different looks in the time it
used to take me to do one. And the best part of using a tool to do this is
that the timesavers (macros, libraries, etc.) are almost done by the time
I'm done with the prototype, so building the rest of the site is just as
fast or faster. And the final code is not significantly slower. Yes, I can
make it faster, but a 100% expenditure to obtain a 5% gain isn't realistic.

Plus, if the client gets a brainstorm and wants to change the file
structure in the middle of the job (yes, this *has* happened) it's far
easier to change it with a decent tool than it is with a text editor. And a
site structure rehab? Don't get me started!


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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