There used to be a time that creating a webpage was a hard job. You had to open notepad, vim (or whatever editor was suitable those days) and you had to create every piece of markup by hand. Then came the first web editors (Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe Go Live) which made these things easy. I have to admit they produced horrible markup, however everybody, even my grandma who is currently 92 years old, could make a webpage.

Nowadays we got used to the ease to create pages on the web, even more, we got used to the fact that we can even create mash ups in a few mouseclicks. The nerdy / geeky developer used to be the only one who was able to create a proper mashup. Especially since you needed to the understand the API of a component, you had to be able to understand XML and sometimes XSL and foremost you had to code this by hand in notepad, vim (or whatever editor you use nowadays). Well this is the past, everyone, even my grandma, can create a mashup using only their mouse and their browser (or using their mouse and a third party application).

Taking things for granted

It is even better: people do not know anymore they are mashing / meshing things, they take all components for granted. All the components used in mash ups are so omni present some of the mouseclicking mash up creators don’t even realize that there are developers for these components (yes, Google Earth is developed as well as Yahoo Pipes is a result of a development by others). Facebook is also an excellent example of a mashup platform where all components already are taken for granted, Facebook is always there, the data is always there and a new widget / gadget for Facebook is easily created via a specific widget for Facebook.

What to do with your developer karma?

Is there something we can do with notepad, vim (or other editors) instead of creating webpages or mash up to maintain our mysterious developer karma? Well tons of things, however in the end everyone will be able to create the things you create in your notepad. Even my grandma will build better solutions than you using those (to be developed) tools than you do nowadays in your notepad. The developer will be building on the platform and the cloud components more and more, a platform and components that my grandma can use to build her solutions. The developer will not build any end solutions anymore, those solutions will be made by the masses in the tools they prefer to make them. The outcome is that web developers will be obsolete in the near future.