Alex Dunae

The Case For Code

I came across The Case Against Code on Stuart Thursby’s blog today. As I understand it, he writes that web designers shouldn’t feel constrained by the code required to implement their designs.

As he aptly writes

coding a website introduces inherent realities which a Photoshop document cannot account for. As a result, I’ve found myself (and I’m sure many of you can say the same) dialing down my designs somewhat to allow for a more realistic and attainable end result.

I partially agree with his point.

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The Benefits of Giving Away Code

In 2007 I decided to start releasing a few pieces of code to the public.

At the time I was experimenting with Rails, so I released a few plugins, including one that became pretty popular.  Since then, I’ve released a few more odds and ends, notably a few WordPress plugins and Premailer, a tool that helps build email newsletters.

My motivation was pretty clear in the beginning–the web had been good to me, and I wanted to do my part for other developers. But I’ve often wondered if there were other benefits to releasing code, and what they could be.

Here’s a brief of summary of what I’ve found.

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