[jcampbell1]

> Being good at the first two is a completely separate skill from being able to write and design software in a programming language like JS.

If find to write good JS view code, you need to be able to write html/css yourself. If you are implementing something like auto-suggest, a designer's html isn't likely to be much help. To write the view properly, you need to know how to position the suggest box relative to the input or cursor without interference from the rest of the DOM.

I don't think you can claim to be a good front end JS developer, and suck at HTML/CSS. I constantly find situations like: "how am I going to make this design work if the user name is 20 characters long?... Okay I'll float this, right text align this, overflow hide this, then a long-title plus a long username will automatically push the content down a bit". It is clearly a programming puzzle that needs to get solved by someone other than a designer.

[greghinch]

Yes, as I mentioned, there should be crossover, and everyone should know a something of the other side where that happens. So the Product dev should be able to certainly write HTML/CSS and understand how they work, but the Designer would be typically better at building a full template with optimized CSS. Put another way, good designers know their mediums, which should includes HTML and CSS, and doesn't stop at Photoshop.