Between Ruby on Rails, Google Code, and site’s like gotcodesnippets.net and Scratch. I’m not sure how much code most people really need to know anymore. I’ve edited my fair share of CSS and HTML documents only knowing a little bit of HTML or CSS. I’m kind of learning along the way. If you asked me to open a blank text document and start building a website I’d have no idea where to start. It’s beginning to look alot less like an internet full of geeks and programmers and more like the playground of anyone and everyone.
Take MySpace for example. To edit MySpace’s pages you needed to embed some form of HTML, maybe Javascript or Flash. But how much of that did people actually write versus copying from some site like Pimp My Profile ? Facebook is making it easier and easier for anyone to post polls, quizzes, widgets etc on their profile. In fact all of these social networking sites have all but replaced the “Homepage.” Some of us out there have our own page, but with WordPress, Expression Engine, Drupal and Joomla…how much code do we really need to know?
I think this has some interesting implications. The most interesting of which is what will happen when these building blocks can be recombined to form new ideas. It’s not much different than the web 2.0 movement whereby all of a sudden the consumers became the producers. While that has happened with videos, pictures and music creating unique mash-ups of content, what will happen when the coding gets so easy that anyone can make a program? I’m curious to see what it goes.
What are your thoughts on this? Am I way off or do you see this trend on it’s way?