It can be easy to get stuck, doing things the same way you've always done them. I recently began to think that I may be in such a situation.
I’ve been building sites for over fifteen years. Eleven of those were with an agency and I’ve been freelancing for the last four. I am thinking my trusty tech stack may be going stale and it could be time for something new.
I started learning web development in college while I was getting a degree in Graphic Design. I was convinced that being able to code would be something that would be expected of designers. That turned out not necessarily be true but, it was an assumption that gave me an advantage. I bought books and learned on my own. I took a couple of college courses where we were taught HTML, CSS, some Javascript, and Flash (lol).
I invited the owners of a local agency to my senior exhibition and they hired me a couple of months before I graduated. At the time, I saw myself as a graphic designer who happened to know how to write code. That didn't last long. Within a year or so I was doing web design and development full time.
Around that same time, lots of things were changing in the world of web development. New JavaScript libraries like Angular started appearing and people began using package managers and bundlers. Frankly, I just didn’t get it. I felt that these things made our job overly complicated and I didn’t see how my clients would benefit from them. I had taken the ideas behind progressive enhancement to heart. I learned PHP and MySQL and began using it to build simple CRUD apps for clients. If something could be done on the server, that is where I did it. Eventually, I found WordPress and have been using it ever since.
Recently, I had to learn some new tools for a couple of projects. Oddly enough, these were no-code tools. This client needed a marketing site and a custom client portal for their agency. Normally, I would reach for WordPress but the client was dead set against using it. They had used it on projects in the past and didn't want to deal with keeping it updated and secure. They suggested Squarespace but, these projects required a more custom solution. While designing the prototype for the client portal, I discovered Bubble. It was my first time using Bubble and I was blow away what was possible with it. I was able to give the client a custom web app with authentication and Vimeo API integration.
For the marketing site, I used Webflow for the first time and really enjoyed it. Building front-ends with Webflow is literally like writing HTML and CSS visually. There was a time when I turned my nose up at no-code tools but I began to entertain the thought of pivoting to using visual development tools full-time.
At the end of the day, I still love to write code. Learning something new reminded me that this isn't a career that allows you to stop learning. I’ve already began taking my knowledge of modern web tools and Javascript to the next level and I’ll be looking for ways to incorporate it into my client work and side projects. I’ll be learning in public along the way.
