[agentultra]

It's the "Theory of Multiple Intelligences" bit that gave me the impression of pigeon-holing. And the paragraph preceding it where you go on about the typical high-school stereotypes. And the rest of the article is built on the premise of a dichotomy where creativity is separate from technical ability... the whole "left brain/right brain" idea.

It's bunk!

I think the split is actually in designer/front-end developer.

If you want to make analogies to other industries, I think your concept of designer is more analogous to a "concept artist". The person who has the good ideas that are not restrained by the burden of having to think about how to build them.

However when I hear, "web designer" -- I'm thinking of someone who can create or take a concept and actually build it. Someone who uses the tools available (HTML, CSS, Javascript, et al) to create something. This person does have to know how to build their ideas from the tools available.

And I think for most projects the designer is also the concept artist. Very few (if any) web projects actually need those roles filled by two separate specialists.

So I don't think it's bullshit. Designers should know how to code. And they should be good at it too.

[folletto]

Again, I agree. The whole article isn't built on that dichotomy. It's just a sequence from a simple perspective to a more complex perspective, and actually ends saying that it's better if you are willing to expand your view, exactly like you are saying. :)

~

On the second part of your comment, well, you are talking about "web designer" specifically, and with a very specific definition of it as well. If that's your definition, then yes, he have to do that. But er, it looks more like a Frontend Developer to me, and I never heard of a "Concept Artist". ;) However, it's a matter of terminology here, and there's surely some confusion about it. :)