Cursed or blessed?

I feel very fortunate that I’m able to both design and code (somewhat) successfully. But I can’t deny those moments when I wish I didn’t, and/or couldn’t, do both.

I think it’s safe to say that the majority of web applications today have involved a design team and a development team. That’s because, from my experience, a team good at one thing isn’t necessarily good at the other. So it makes sense to harness the right skills and get the best of both worlds.

Today my job consists (for the most part) of designing and building web applications. Sometimes I’m only involved on the front-end (design), and sometimes just the back-end (coding). But more often than not, it’s both.

Design

What I’ve discovered over the years is that I have a decent eye for design. I can pick up on things that other people don’t quite see or realize. I’m not the person who “likes it” but “doesn’t know why I like it”. I’m the opposite. I know exactly why I like it. I know why it looks good. And that, I believe, is a gift in which I’m very grateful to have been given.

Coding

Behind design lies code. Like any eager designer, I had to learn to code so that I could give life to my designs and ideas. At first this was a means to an end. But then something happened. I began to really, really appreciate programming, and I saw how I could also design with code. I could make code beautiful (to me) just as I could make designs beautiful, which is an addictive realization, I might add.

Having a creative mind which allows me to write (in my opinion) good code is another gift that I’m extremely grateful for.

Note: I should mention that these things are coupled with plenty of late-night coding sessions and many hours/years of studying and practice. It hasn’t all been for free :-)

So, what’s the problem?

Let’s be the designer first. I’m extremely interested in HTML 5 and what it’s bringing to the table. The canvas element alone is amazing. As a designer, it’s my duty to know and be aware of this. How else could I utilize these fancy new elements in my markup? That’s what good designers do. They know.

Now let’s be the programmer. Well, Ruby/Rails has my utmost attention. And lately, jQuery has been consuming a lot of my efforts. But now there’s multi-core computing with Erlang. Or what about Scala? And aside from languages, there’s the document-driven databases such as CouchDB, MongoDB, and friends. I want in on the action. That’s what good programmers do. They keep up.

Maybe you can see my dilemma, which essentially boils down to overwhelm. In this industry, there are so many topics to cover and things to study. It’s never-ending. And having the skills to both design and code is almost like I’ve deepened the challenge to the point of burnout, and both get neglected. I’ve taken overwhelm and turned it into complete submerge, and that’s demotivating.

I’ve worked very hard to get where I am today. And having the talents to both design and code hardly seems like something to complain about, I realize. I know a ton of designers who wish they could code, and I know a ton of coders who wish they could design. But I’ve thought to myself, on several occasions, “I wish I didn’t do X so I could put more focus on Y”.

Maybe I could have been a great designer if all that time coding was spent on design? Or maybe I could have been a great programmer if all that time designing was spent coding? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just ranting on about nothing. Maybe everyone feels like there’s too much to learn, to know, and I’m only different in the fact that I’ve chosen to write about it. Or, and possibly the most admirable of thoughts thus far, maybe it’s possible to be both a great designer and a great programmer.

So, am I cursed or blessed? Definitely blessed, and I wholeheartedly believe that. There are very few things, if any, I’d change about my life. And that in and of itself is motivation to keep on striving for greatness, so that’s what I’ll keep doing.