337 – No Code Is a Lie  ## Metadata - Author: [[WP Builds]] - Full Title: 337 – No Code Is a Lie - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/2b96b4ab-add8-4251-bc08-c0bbb32517a8 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Limits of No Code Templates** - No code tools let users create functional websites without coding knowledge, but small CSS adjustments are often needed when templates don't fit content perfectly. - Reliance solely on templates can quickly lead to design problems, demanding custom code or adaptation. Transcript: Speaker 2 And let's talk about the first thing that we actually got some show notes here, some questions to ask yourself. First one is beyond replacing content on a template, is it really possible to avoid something like CSS? Yeah. Speaker 1 You see, when you wrote that prompt as a question, so the back and forth that David and I have is that the show notes come up and we both contribute things. David often poses questions and I'll write in response to him. I thought the answer to that question is I don't really think that you do need to have too much knowledge because, for example, if you go to a service, so this is nothing to do with WordPress, But if you go to a service like Squarespace, Wix and so on, I think the premise is that is that you just, you don't need to know any of that stuff. If you do know that stuff, you can probably fine tune things. But in order to get something out, you can log in, create a page, click on a template, amend the template, add rows, change the images, whatever, and then click save and you probably don't Even need to get involved with the basics, margins and padding. They're probably called something else and you probably don't need to know that pixels are involved. It's a small padding or medium padding or larger, whatever. And WP default blocks now go down in this route as well. You've got SML, Excel, things like that. So I think you probably can't. Now, you could get into the whole debate about whether it's a good website or not, but it's a website, it's live ([Time 0:05:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6e700dc3-0289-4cf3-a757-043e8855af84)) - **Learning Code After No Code Start** - Nathan started web design without coding knowledge, learning bits of CSS along the way. - This reflects a common path where no code tools serve as a gateway to coding skills. Transcript: Speaker 1 I began by knowing almost nothing and then figuring out, oh, why is that doing that? And then I discovered that, oh, you can do that thing with CSS, can you? That's interesting. All right, I'll try that. I learned a little bit like that, but I didn't start with an expectation of knowing the code. But yes, definitely learn some along the way. So I concede that. ([Time 0:10:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8f276231-b5e9-4160-b5da-00b321591b98)) - **Page Builders Drive WordPress Growth** - Page builders have driven WordPress growth by empowering users to visually build websites without code. - Elementor's user base has grown steadily, showing sustained demand for no code solutions. Transcript: Speaker 2 Part of that no code. This was the next question really is no code of revolution. Are we in the middle of a revolution? Or is it it could even be in decline? Who knows? But there has been a surge hasn't, though, of lots of people being able to build sites would not know in code. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think I think this has been one of the the drivers of WordPress's success over the last, well, let's say decade, maybe it's not quite as long as that, but the evolution of these Tools, and there's a whole variety of them, but let's just broadly call them page builders, these tools that empowered people to build things in a visual way and really visual way in The sense that what you see is basically what you're going to get. You click save and all that happens is that the UI elements, which indicate that you're editing things, they disappear. But broadly speaking, the website looks the same. I think it's I think it's driven a lot of growth. I mean, the data speaks for itself, doesn't it? Yeah. You only have to look at some and you can mention the links that you've got with built with and what have you in a minute. But the the growth of some of these page builders, you know, the really popular ones seems to be directly related to the growth in WordPress's growth. In other words, if those those plugins themes in some cases that enabled drag and drop building, no code building hadn't been invented. And we were still using the templating engine and you had to use PHP and you had to understand all of that stuff. I don't think WordPress would be anywhere near where it is now. Speaker 2 No, and it was interesting. And I didn't look at that recently, but if I remember correctly, the Google trends for kind of WordPress search terms, I don't know how you interpret it. It kind of peaked in, I think it was a yeah, 2014 and it's been dropping off in terms of people looking there. But when we look at the kind of page builders and stuff and searches for that and what I looked up just recently was, and it's a surprise, I may be to a lot of our audience that this is the way It is. We look at built with with Elementor, it's a clear upward trend with no fall off that we see completely. And they say they've got 13 million, which is over 20%. And W3 texts puts it as the fastest growing content management system. So it's kind of treating it as if it's WordPress almost since the first of April 2003. So sorry, 2000 and 23. So it's kind of interesting how a lot of us in our circles might think, well, it's peak was some years back. And then we look at WP bakery, which you and I, it was kind of, well, it was almost forgotten about, wasn't it? Because it was there before we even thought about page builders. And it wasn't one of the new options for us. So you didn't think it got talked about, but it's way up there still, dropped off a little bit. Speaker 1 Yeah, totally phenomenal. Like I will link to the the built with article that David found on it's called Elementor usage statistics and it charts from 2017, which I imagine is the date when it was released. It says the sixth, the sixth month of 2017. So June 2017 starts at zero. And then more or less, the whole chart is at about an angle of 40 degrees. I mean, obviously, you know, you've spread the X axis out how you like, but there is no point where there is a sustained dip. There's a teeny, tiny dip at the end of or in the latter part of 2021. Yeah. But that self corrects within the space of a month. Speaker 2 So it's just this inexorable rise. And ([Time 0:10:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7eb9a1c2-2341-4df5-bf59-abf90c50554d)) - **Code Skills Affect Professionalism** - Professionals can deliver web projects without coding if client needs are met, but long-term quality often demands coding skills. - Lack of code knowledge risks de-skilling and missing new CSS trends and optimizations. Transcript: Speaker 1 Well, this is an interesting one, isn't it? Because, you know, the question here really is, are you a professional if you don't know any code? Is that kind of what we're smuggling into this question? Is that kind of it? In other words, if can you claim to be a professional if you know a page builder? If you, if you can't answer some basic questions about CSS, are you, are you really fit for the job? I just don't know what the answer to this is because I think if you can, if you can provide a solution for a client and what you're giving them ticks the boxes that they need ticking and it May be that in the back of your mind, you, you have this feeling that maybe the code is a bit bloated. Maybe I haven't thought enough about accessibility. Maybe there's a whole bunch of things that I should have stripped down in CSS. Maybe we're loading a load of JavaScript libraries that we don't need. Maybe all of that's true, but the client has paid me. That is my primary motive. So I'm happy. I guess if that's your concern and you don't need to touch the code and you can deliver the project and all the people are happy, then no, you don't need to code. But I feel that you're in particular, you're, you really are going in the direction. You've realized that over the last 10 years, same with me, that over the last 10 years, the page builder, the no code solution has, has lulled you into a sense where, well, this is how this Is how I want to do it in the future. And now you've realized that you've become de-skilled. You haven't kept up to date with the latest trends and there's a lot of cool latest trends, especially in CSS. ([Time 0:20:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1a5d9363-1a1f-4cfb-8868-e95407274aab)) - **Web Design Requires Human Understanding** - Delivering only what clients want may lower usability, accessibility, and increase environmental impact of websites. - True web design requires understanding human user experiences, empathy, and accessibility beyond templates. Transcript: Speaker 2 There is perhaps a global responsibility for people in our trade, maybe, because no code means more than needed code and there's environmental considerations to go with that. And that bad user experience, you know, we know really that our clients don't know how to judge what they need in terms of our website. They only know it from what they see and other functionality and they ask whether they can have that, but they don't necessarily understand the kind of 80% of how you might go about creating A good user experience for people. So if we, if we just indulge what the client asks for, could we just be lowering the usability of the web more generally? And I think accessibility in advance of us a bigger issue. How do we deal with that? And also could also this declines something that's very human, that kind of UX work, understanding, getting empathy with other users. Those kind of very human jobs that can't really be bettered by AI, are we not losing them by just giving the client what they want? That looks like a website. Here's a website. You're happy with it. Good. Speaker 1 Done. Pay me. I think so. Yeah. Speaker 2 Sorry. I apologize. I interrupted. No, no, that's all. So I think for me, I mean, to be honest, I'm in a code I'm useless at. I just don't have the capacity for that. I'm more into the psychology, but what I've lent more towards the code now is because the fact that, well, if I'm doing that, then I'm going to monitor the sites to see how people are using It. We're going to interpret it together. There's going to be a longer relationship. So I probably need to own that code a bit better so I can tweak it as needed in a more easy way rather than have to fight up with a system which may have to be changed as technology goes. I might as well just go the slow route with the technology and just only take notice of what the W3C is. So it's not really, well, I hope it's not code snobbery because I'm really not qualified to have any. I'm just useless with it, but I'm starting to learn it and take it more seriously on the basis that the way I think I should go for me anyway is to do that kind of more UX agile type approach Where we improve. And we see I've redefined the web designer's job for me as not somebody who creates the website, the client lights, but as the person who helps that client through technology communicate With an audience out there. Speaker 1 I love this bit. I think this is probably one of the best bits that we've had in our conversations in weeks and weeks and weeks. So my slightly glib answer of, yeah, if the client's happy, you're happy. We've ticked the boxes, hand it over, then job done. I bet that that is the raison d'etre for a lot of people, right? It's just get the job done, move on. But these points that you raised are so cool. So the environmental considerations. We've talked about this in the past tangentially and in other dedicated podcasts as well, you know, the stripping down the code so that you are creating less of a footprint. This is such an, such, well, it's so the right thing to do in every way. The bad user experience, you know, really thinking about that so that your client isn't just getting some sort of cookie cutter site, but they're getting something which really makes Their business work. And it may be that the original ideas get all thrown out the window and you end up with something totally unexpected because you had the conversation rather than using a template. And then of course, the whole issue of accessibility and the fact that there's a proportion of the people out there who will not be able to consume what is on your website unless you do That work. This is like, who's going to argue with that? That's such an important thing and this is the area where you can't do that without understanding a bit of the code. You've got to understand how a person who has site in Perman is browsing around. You know, if they've got a keyboard reader, you've got to know what they're looking for. You've got to know about the way that the tab key works and where it's going to hop to and how it's going to behave in a menu and all of those kind of things. And ([Time 0:22:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b8567a50-0463-4be4-ae2f-76c8d9e7c3bf)) - **CSS Grid and Modern Features Advantages** - CSS Grid offers powerful multidimensional layout control beyond Flexbox but is mostly unsupported by WordPress builders. - New CSS features like variable fonts and color handling enable advanced, flexible design when you know how to code. Transcript: Speaker 2 Well, I think the biggest thing is the new way to lay out your pages or in your entire site would be CS Grid, which is now fully supported. And I think this is a real, this makes it quite, if you want to use that, then you are restricted in most of the WordPress solutions because it's working to the Flexbox. So you're only working within a row. You're working in one dimension at a time where with Grid, if you get your head around it, which is not easy, I must say, it is incredible because you can kind of set up within your whole Body where your head is going to go in your foot. And for example, you might want to have for your mobile, you would start mobile first, your navigation where your thumbs are at the bottom of the screen. And then without duplicating the content as you would have to do with Flexbox, you can have that jump up to the top right of your header for the desktops or something like that. And you can move stuff around. And I think it's really, for me, one of the things, one of the beauties of a lot of the technology that came with WordPress was if you had a custom post-type, say, products or something, And you arrange the design, you know, you had this product image on one side and then this text of the title was above it and then there was some other tabs or something underneath it, you Could rearrange that if you had sort of custom fields going into this dynamic content to move all of that kind of stuff around. And that was like, wow, in one template, you could change everything and change all of these custom post-types, you know, you could have hundreds of them. But now with CSS Grid, you can go, well, actually, I didn't need to make it that complex. It's three-dimensional. I can set up sections and move them around on the grid, you know? So there's a lot of that cool stuff. But I think so much of every part of the website, I think, is changing now with orders, some better alternatives, which will, it'll make it difficult for them to come easily into a builder Situation. So, you know, we've got HD colors coming very soon, wider color gamut, so we'd have to change all those. We've got kind of, you know, sort of different fonts, flexible fonts. We've got being able to set your character width for consistency. We've got all a way of organizing the code through custom properties or variable. Yeah, CS variables. And I don't know. I could go on forever, but also image formations and how you use images and just even variable fonts. And now you can start to make them look gruff and stuff if you know some CSS and change them. Yeah, you've got one file to do all of your different weights or all of your different slants and you can make them go and G with some of them if you want, if you know some CSS. So, yeah, so loads of cool stuff, I think, which is turning my head there. ([Time 0:31:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fbe25588-64c2-4880-bc54-6c058329c70d)) - **AI Challenges Developer Roles** - AI and no code tools threaten developers by automating routine tasks but cannot replicate creative and contextual problem-solving. - AI's fast learning from collective feedback could undermine professional credibility and job security in web design. Transcript: Speaker 1 We could go on for hours from this one. Oh boy. I think we could do a whole episode, but you kick us off. Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, you know, we talked about it before. So we have kind of different... You're more worried about it than I am because I sent the think. It's that creative thinking. So, in the same way that no code is not going to be a threat to developers because there will always need to be some custom solutions that are creative, that are ongoing, I think, you know, For people. And so I think no. And I think AI is the same. I think at the moment, it's not very good. And I take your point as going to improve and it will be hard to distinguish between what a human would do. But I still think as language evolves itself, you know, as a human thing that I don't think I'm not sure that artificial intelligence can always do it. So I just think with all the developers and the, you know, there's that kind of human thing that we know about understanding something in context. So if something could write the code for me, like page builders, his biggest flaw now in the time of CSS grid is that you take it page by page where if you understand the concept of CSS grid, You will probably think about the whole site and how it's structured and you'll just have a line or two, the most efficient way to be able to change the layouts for individual pages or Groups of pages. And I think when AI tries to take and write some code, it's never going to have the full context of either how it's going to be used, how it needs to connect with the audience to solve the Kind of problems or within the whole of the system. And I think that's what developers and that's so I think both of them are the same. They have a weakness. Speaker 1 Yeah, I know what you mean in that I have this, I have this vague hope and belief, I guess, that the humans will always have a place and that, you know, they'll always be better at inspecting Things and checking for that the other humans desires are being met. In other words, the client, the human, their desires are being met and the outcomes are in line with what they want and can tweak it all. My my slight concern is that when you make a mistake in code, only you get better from it, the rest of humanity doesn't. So you have to learn everything by yourself. Whereas the AI, all of the AI gets better. So it can then churn out the correct solution to everybody based upon one person's error. So in other words, if somebody reports to chat GPT that no, no, no, no, that code doesn't work, you need to do it this way, then everybody else who makes that request will get the updated Version henceforth, you know, that that's the principle behind it. And I'm less sanguine about it. I do think that there's going to be a moment where it is good enough that it starts to undermine the promise that web designers have web developers, web designers, whatever, watch that It just undermines that there's an industry there, you know, and as soon as 10%, 20%, 30% of the people are out of work, it's going to become more and more difficult because I feel like The AI will just get better. I I'm a bit afraid of what it's going to be capable of. And I think my my thoughts are that we need to put the brakes on a little bit and and figure out what it's going to do. Because I think a lot of the things that we do are in the purview, even though we wouldn't like to believe it, because we think we're, you know, we've got this unique talent. I think it a lot of what we do, especially if we're not using code, you know, we're using like templates and page builders, I think a lot of that will be in the purview. I saw a really interesting article in on, I think it was the make.wordpress.org channel the other day. It was an Anne McCarthy piece where she was speculating with a video what that might look like in Gutenberg and the idea was you gave it a text prompt and then then it just gave you back a Load of different possible block patterns that might suit that and read. So I can't remember what it was, but let's say I don't know. I've got a grocery store and I want to sell my my fruit and veg to the world. And you click a button and it just gives you 10 or 20 different patterns that you can then dump into your website. And it, you know, it'll do all that in the space of a few moments. It will be editable by humans at that point, which is great, but it is, it is doing a lot of work. And I guess my fear is that it's just doing so much work that it undermines the rest of us. It undermines the credibility of us and our ability to have an industry even. ([Time 0:40:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f933dfd1-00eb-4cee-be19-9891bb681a88)) - **Prioritize Client Empathy in Design** - Focus on client communication and empathy to understand user journeys when designing websites. - This human insight is critical and unlikely to be replaced by AI or no code solutions. Transcript: Speaker 2 And I think that's where AI just will always, and I think, you know, the equivalent is being done, you know, when you see that, you know, I often add a view of code developers as being, you Know, kind of people who just have pizza in some kind of dungeon environment or something, you know, churning out code. But, you know, the very, you know, the other top end, the real thinkers, the real philosophers, yeah, yeah, you know, psychology. And I think that's that's where I've tried to sort of aim for because, you know, when you are designing, you're putting kind of copy, which you can spend ages thinking that's not the right Word that just doesn't sum it up this, you're backwards and forwards with the client over it, and then trying to pick that right image. And I just don't think AI is ever going to do it. But even so, you would still have the job of monitoring, even if it picked it in the first place and interpreting what, how the humans were doing that. And I just don't think AI will be able to do that interpretation of how people are ([Time 0:45:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a741dbe5-19d0-4bf8-a447-20e61dcfb965)) - **Coding Empowers Beyond AI** - Solely verifying AI-generated code is uninspiring and risks reducing creativity to checkbox tasks. - Knowing how to code enables better control over accessibility, environmental impact, and client needs fulfillment. Transcript: Speaker 1 Can you imagine the joylessness of that work? Where you basically, you go to an AI, you give it a text prompt or whatever, and it pushes stuff back at you. And you just have to check if it's, if it's okay. It's like, oh, there's no, you don't get the creative juices flowing at all. You're just some sort of, you know, it just seems like a really joyless work. And I think you're doing, I think you are insulating yourself against this in a good way because of the fact that you're getting back into the code and you're going to be able to justify All of the things that we talked about a moment ago, you know, the accessibility and the environment and all of those, you're going to, you're going to have more strings to your bow in That case, which I think is sensible of you. ([Time 0:46:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/54899321-e10b-4839-b2a6-90ed3272adac)) - **No Code Meets User Demand** - There remains significant commercial demand for no code solutions, as many users prefer building sites without understanding code. - Marketing by platforms like Squarespace emphasizes ease without coding, showing widespread appeal. Transcript: Speaker 2 Is need for it. Speaker 1 There's commercial need for it as well. So, I don't know, maybe that'll slow down at some point in the future, but seemingly there's a still a very, very big crowd of people who want to be able to do things without even thinking About the code. And actually, you only have to look at the TV commercials for things like Squarespace and Wix. And what is it that their strap line is? They always talk about the fact that you don't need to own, know any code. That is their big selling point. In fact, it's the selling point, which indicates that that's what the people want. ([Time 0:48:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/14ecdd87-11d9-4ddf-a4d5-bfbdfe0d086b))