Coding and CMSes

When knowing programming and a bit of computer science, at a certain moment you are confronted with the web. Perhaps a strange idea at first, but the first steps in computer science are of course offline. And as manually as possible, to make you think.

So the first time you make the link with the web, it is a funny experience: where is the compiler? All of a sudden new programming languages (or sometimes familiar ones) appear, with a different purpose. All is centered around content which must be presented to users. All heavy calculation, the classical desktop tasks, is gone. It seems.

And then there's that one moment when someone asks you:
"So, you are a computer scientist?"
"Yes" is what you answer, thinking you should have put on your t-shirt
"Do you know how to do websites?"
Notice how code or develop is not used, you just do websites.

No matter what you answered, of course you go looking to this website thing after the conversation. And you discover the wonderful world of HTML, Javascript and CSS. And programming languages for the web.

Of course HTML+CSS is not attractive, imagine running your C code on a different platform and getting different output? Javascript is fun at first, but then the script part in the name reminds you of script kiddies. No Javascript for you.

So where do you go? To a CMS, it seems. The number of homegrown CMSes is huge. And it is an interesting task to work on, making your own system to do websites.

And it feels better. Yes you program less. But only at first. Then you discover what is not (yet) possible. And you start programming. The computer scientist is on the web again.