ian jenkins

If any young web developer (of which I am one myself) should be stupid enough to ask me for advice, it would be to do the simple things well.

When I was an up and coming footballer (soccer-er), many a coach told me to ‘do the simple things well’. A player who can control the ball well, pass the ball simply and do all the basics well will get a lot further than the player who tries to do too much, tries to take on too many players and tries to score the perfect goal.

Of course there are the odd exception to the rule, but then even players who are known for their skills such as Ronaldo have benefited from being reigned in a bit. Alex Ferguson is often credited with turning Ronaldo from a spectacular player with no end product to an all round superstar (for the record I hate Ronaldo, Fergusan and all thgins Manchester United).

Going back to my original point, if you can do the simple things well then you can go places. This is not only true for football of course, but is also true with web development and indeed most things in life.

Here come the acronyms

Unless you have been living under a web development rock for the last decade you will be familiar with the term KISS. Just to remind us this stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. As much as it is now a bit of a cliche (and I hate Cliche’s) never has an acronym rung so true.

I would take a web developer who comments their code well, organises things well with sensible directory structure and naming schemes over some web developer ‘guru’ who ignores these assets any day.

It all boils down to what makes a good web developer. Where some people may argue that experience and a good understanding of advanced methodologies make a good web developer, I think all of this is in vain if they cannot do the simple things well.

It is true and some what essential that you are constantly learning new things and expanding your knowledge on a daily basis, but this will all be built on a better grounding if you can do the basics and indeed the simple things well. In effect you don’t want to leave any demons behind when you move on to the next stage of your development as they may come back and bite you in the ass.