My previous post wasn't intended as elitist or egocentric, it was more about the reason someone might want to know the bricks they use to build something.
It's like building a house but not wanting to build it, but only design it. It's going to look like you designed it, but it might break down for no reason, might only work on a few types of foundation and might not be allowed to live in by local regulations (doesn't mean that you can't or won't do it)
The WWW and HTML were made so people could actually look at the code and know what it's about. Then came de 99% of people who didn't want to know that and one of the people of the 1% that did know, created a tool so people without knowledge could design something. He made a ton of money and probably doesn't care about what happens next.
Next, websites were created that followed the rules of the application it was created with. The sites didn't care about regulations or efficiency, only about the end, the display for a group of people in a limited base of time (lets say, 5 years). Therefore the end was reached and it's purpose was fulfilled. The tools used to create the websites were just a means to an end. How it was reached didn't seem important at that time.
After 5 years, people were upgrading their hardware, software and rules, and found new ways to connect digital networks. As soon as they saw the speed of those new shiny networks everybody wanted just that. And so they got it.
The websites that were made using 5 year old rules which were upheld by the tools they were created with were still online, and faster, even as the code was large and big en did things it didn't need to do.
More websites came, with more content. Images, CSS, JS files, etc, etc.. More data needed to be sent to the guy or girl who wanted to know what was on that page. But that didn't matter, the networks were fast.
A few months later, as the internet was still growing and sites continued to grow as well, people started to notice slowdows and clogging of the internet. Those pages on the websites they visited for years now, seemed to appear slower than when they first appeared, and for some reason the computers used to view those sites needed to work harder than ever to display them! How could that have happened?
It's a bit of a long, cut, fictive, story on the way things are, and are going.. But you get the point.
There is nothing wrong with making money or with happy clients and happy visitors on happy websites. That isn't the point..
If you want to make money and be a webdesigner, you can use whatever you like, WYSIWYG gets the job done, it's your tool of choice.
But for those who are webmasters, programmers or the ones who want precision, efficiency and speed, WYSIWYG will never get you what you want or need. It never did, it doesn't do that now, and it never will.
( Speed: load as fast as possible, not 'fast', because everything is 'fast' these days, that isn't the point in this case)
( Precision: every singe variable, css property and line of code is there for the exact reason it was designed for, and no other reason. Everything will always be in the right place, when rendered in standards-compliance mode)
( Efficiency: whatever you make the browser do, you do it because you need that specific thing done, and for no other reason. Stuff that needs to get loaded gets loaded because you know you need it, and because you need it implemented, it never has to load the same thing twice or more, because you know it's already loaded somewhere.)
Text coding isn't about making money, at least, it's not when you are designing. It is about what skill-set you want to use, and wether you just need the means to an end, or wether you want to know what you are doing. There is a component of pride and fulfillment of creation somewhere as well, but that is with the WYSIWYG developers too I guess.
So when you make money, you need means to an end, a business model and a simple course to get you up and running. End of story, just go, make money. That is when it doesn't matter what you do or how you do it, and that is fine.
There is the small problem of dependency, you need the ones who provide you with the tools you need to do your job to keep them up to date, keep them working, and you need the pay them to do that.
Another point is that you don't get the say what you want, but that might not matter if the means will have you reach the end you seek. (most of the time)
If you want to 'program' the web, or make a browser do things, you need to command every piece about it, and the only way is text.
Oh, and for the record ;-) .. The analogy about the code behind Word documents is really, awfully bad.. Word documents are binary, proprietary, documents, made for endusers to swap the results of text processing. They are made to be read and written by applications, and not for closer human control or inspection.
If an analogy would be needed, take an analogy for an action, like, publishing. WYSIWYG is a publishing method. Word is WYSIWYG, almost all Adobe applications are WYSIWYG, windows is WYSIWYG.. Coding isn't WYSIWYG. Especially for those who can't read code and picture the result in their mind. :)
The analogy would be: When publishing something, you don't want to know if the fibers of what you're making are aligned perfectly.
