I thought I would post this in the design forum, since I've never started a thread here before. I see a lot of HTML and CSS issues come up here, which I think is a good thing (since it is so important to making websites), but it brings to mind a very important lesson that I learned when I was still pretty green.

A big part of learning web design, is going to be learning where you fit in, or what your job is. It took me longer than it should have to learn that I'm not really a designer, but really, I'm a developer. It took me a long time to really realize the difference between the two.

There are some people that are both designers and developers, of whom I am very jealous. I almost fit into that category, since I work mostly on the front-end, but I still consider myself a coder rather than an artist.

This sounds like an easy question, but you really need to ask yourself the question: "Am I an artist, or am I an engineer?". "Am I both?".

There are many many people whom I work with, that work almost exclusively on the artistic side of web-design. They still understand things like the flow of the document, and basic HTML and CSS, but they are mostly concerned with the asthetic value of websites. I consider those people to be designers.

There are other people(like me), that use Photoshop almost every day, but mostly for editing designs, slicing them, then putting them back together to make them into a product. They then add behaviors and styles, to make them complete. I consider those people to be front-end-developers, not designers.

There is an important difference. Where do you fit in?

I'm definitively a programmer !
I realized it a long time ago, as I had the opportunity to learn web dev in an enterprise who separated the 2 activities.

There where 2 peoples doing models, and slicing them into html, and a bunch (5) of programmers who where implementing functions into those pages.
I've learned a lot of being strongly organized, the value of writing/sketching the worflow before starting to code with highly skilled programmers, and still today, I would not be at the place I am now if those peoples had not took the time to teach me.

For the record, I started working in the computing field as an network and system admin.
Still do some, but personally. Today, I'm a DBA and T-SQL (MS sql server) programmer in a 100+ people company.

I straddle both sides - I do my own designs, but I'm also a coder, though I don't do much in the scripting area. I do, however, acknowledge that I probably lean more towards the 'logic' side than the 'artistic', but I still love the design side and I think I do pretty well on that side. A looong time ago when I was in college, I learned to be a programmer, I've always been good on the technical side of things, hence the 25 years in IT in my career path.