[schrijver]

Coming at this as a designer who learned to code in both senses of the word, I have to disagree with the sentiment that HTML/CSS is easy.

Sure, the principle is rather straightforward, but writing CSS is tedious and error-prone and the HTML/CSS is combination is modeled on single column text based layouts… it’s shocking to find out there’s no built in support for columns and no way to vertically align an element, for example.

I spent a month doing CSS until I had learned to implement the kind of grid I could knock together in 5 minutes in InDesign… very unsatisfying… Whereas later I spent a month learning Python and felt like I made much more progress, deepening my understanding of the digital medium, improving my “procedural literacy” and shaping my views about possible interactions.

So programming logic is actually more easy and fun for me—though that doesn’t take away from the fact that you need CSS knowledge to make a design work…

[talmand]

As a designer who develops as well, I agree wholeheartedly.

Although I would say that HTML and basic CSS is easy. Getting creative with complex layouts using CSS can get challenging.