waffle

Just to clarify a point from yesterday’s post:

There’s a real reason why WYSIWYG editors never take off – even if they generated perfectly acceptable code, you’d only be able to write static HTML pages reliably in them. Writing CGI scripts require you to bodge the content in one way (actually in several ways depending on the language you choose), writing PHP scripts require you to bodge the content in another way. Django and Rails even cook the final result together from multiple files.

immts, a commenter on Scott’s post, called out anyone who can work without a visual editor as a “savant” and demanded one (a visual editor, that is), but it’s just the way things need to be done. You can’t reliably support web programming and provide visual editing and have these features mesh. It can’t be done. And Coda is most definitely aimed towards web programming, even if it’s a fine tool to just do plain HTML pages in as well. It’s not about being “hardkore”, it’s about what’s workable and what’s not.