Is it worth to learn website coding anymore?

[Pauers]

I know it kinda sound absurd, but look:

I'm a mechanical engineering graduate, so my field is not really coding (specially webdevelopment), but I decided to learn html/css/js coding so I can build websites to produce some content online. And I've been doing so for the last 2 months, so, still a beginner.

Thing is, while I was browsing through tutorials on the webz, I discovered a whole world of website builder programs. And while researching them, they actually amazed me by a lot.

You build the website on a platform that feels like you're on paintbrush. You write, scale, move things and the program does all the coding for you. They even have JS e Jquery animations, mobile scaling, e-commerce ready and member login system. And they are not that expensive, since some don't require monthly fees and are one-time buy.

This one is an example of some of them:







The problem is: this feels kinda too good to be true, are they really worth it? Are they too expensive? Are they too buggy or doesn't work most of the time? Why keep learning to code should be encourajed by people that aren't in the computing field?

[brandMatt]

Godaddy had a web builder that rendered the code to a website on page request, reducing how effectively I can optimize a page for search. More specifically, I couldn't optimize the code with any schema markup.

This is not the case with all web builders. What is though, when you use one you are losing control over your code. Some limit you very marginally, some quite seriously. Say you want to add a trigger for a GA conversion to from. Good luck integrating almost any API to your code.

Another thing to look at is skill. I am a web design professional, your average web builder user probably isn't. I have a lot of knowledge in the not so obvious areas of web design, they probably don't. This lack of skill, will show through in the end result, especially the non user experience stuff.

Besides the baker's time is better spent baking, more profitable too. Why should he/she waste their time trying to pickup a skill they are not suited to, when they could just hire a pro? Everyone profits, everyone does a task they are better at, the result is superior.

[sarahswansea]

It's never a waste to learn HTML/CSS/JavaScript - at some point, you'll need to change something that the website builder can't do!

Website builders are really good for mockups -- but the pages you make aren't generally maintainable or reusable. This is fine if you have a 3-5 page website, but imagine if you are building a website with a hundred pages! You'll want a design that is maintainable and modular, so that you can work with it at a larger scale.

So short answer: website builders *can* be a good solution, as long as you are okay with the limits.

[Pauers]

About hiring a professional it can be very expensive, I simply can't afford that. Besides, I want to be able to perform maintance in what I want, and not, forgive my term, be a webdeveloper's slave that will charge for every little detail. I just need to do it myself.

So the awnser is: builders are somewhat limited.

But there is some builders that are very complete in editing. I know there are some that basically only allows you insert pictures, texts using their standarts with actual little customization, but some look like it's not like this.

Check out this one list of available extensions: WYSIWYG Web Builder Extensions

It has almost everything I ever found on a website on my entire life! How can these stuff not be complete?

[Vapr_Arts]

Buildings are extremely limited if you get down to it. Considering when you know how to program the only limits are your imagination and will to make it happen.

You are mistaken on how complex a website can really be. I highly doubt you could build the next Facebook or Amazon with a WYSIWYG editor.

Sure you may not want to to build anything this amazing (then again why wouldn't you?), but to say it has almost everything you have ever found on a site in your entire life is a little unrealistic.


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[breno]

About hiring a professional it can be very expensive, I simply can't afford that. Besides, I want to be able to perform maintance in what I want, and not, forgive my term, be a webdeveloper's slave that will charge for every little detail. I just need to do it myself.

So the awnser is: builders are somewhat limited.

But there is some builders that are very complete in editing. I know there are some that basically only allows you insert pictures, texts using their standarts with actual little customization, but some look like it's not like this.

Check out this one list of available extensions: WYSIWYG Web Builder Extensions

It has almost everything I ever found on a website on my entire life! How can these stuff not be complete?

There are many elements to a website, graphics, copy, optimization, general design sense, colour paletes, SEO, just to name a few that requires a professional or at least someone who spent time learning about web design/development to being to have a successful website for a business.
You can hire a developer to setup a basic WordPress theme site who can give you your own login to access the back end to make changes yourself independent of the developer.
But to answer your question, yes it is still worth it to learn coding.

[delstu]

I'm a mechanical engineering graduate, so my field is not really coding (specially webdevelopment), but I decided to learn html/css/js coding so I can build websites to produce some content online. And I've been doing so for the last 2 months, so, still a beginner.

The problem is: this feels kinda too good to be true, are they really worth it? Are they too expensive? Are they too buggy or doesn't work most of the time? Why keep learning to code should be encouraged by people that aren't in the computing field?

It depends on several things, the main one being why you want to build websites. Are you looking to start your own business and earn an income? Is this just a hobby? You say you are an ME graduate but have you found employment? - not as easy as some may think these days.

We cannot really define a legitimate answer without more info.

These programs you are referring to always have their limitations which you can avoid by learning to code. It might be faster to learn to use one of these programs but are they sufficient to do what you want or will you need coding knowledge anyway?

[TheGAME1264]

Let me put it to you this way, since you're a mechanical engineer. Let's say I buy a plot of land and I want to build a house on it. I don't want to pay an engineer to design and structure a custom house, so I buy a prefab home. You see how you just cringed when you read that? That's what most of us are doing, only worse. Here's why.

First of all, that list isn't complete. It's not even close. There's also no way it could ever come close to being complete for a very simple reason...websites, if built correctly, are customized to the individual needs of the business and contain features unique to that site and business. Simple example: I'm the developer for a pottery website. They have a want list feature where people can ask for general types of pottery or for specific pieces from a particular era (e.g. the 1920's). Go ahead and try to find any plugin or feature that will work for this specific purpose.

Second, the code warriors on here will tell you what I'm about to. By the time a prebuilt website is adjusted, retrofitted, customized, and made to order the way you want it, it often isn't any less expensive or time-consuming, and in many cases is more expensive than time consuming...much like a prefab home. When you learn code, you'll understand just how true this is, but until then you'll have to take my word for ti.

Third: code bloat. Much as architects tend to overdesign prefab homes (see the article I linked to), third-party website builders tend to overcode their website builders. This makes the resulting websites harder to maintain and puts more strain on servers, thereby increasing costs for both design and hosting. Even as hosts ramp up their resources, a lot of them will flat-out tell you that a cheap hosting plan won't cut it for something like WordPress, for example.

So there are three pretty good reasons. There are others if you want them. Some have been laid out and some haven't.