NYCPHP Meetup

[André Pitanga]

Hey David Krings,

Thanks for the awesome, sometimes passionate, responses!

> I'd pass it and I think I'd be the worst webmaster you ever had.

The test is non eliminatory, and is not the sole factor being 
considered.  It's just a basic test...
Why do you say you'd be the worst webmaster we ever had? We've had 
*terrible* webmasters in the past! You'd have your work cut out for you! lol

>
> I'd rather ask the candidate where they'd look that up in case they 
> don't know. I'd expect that they mention one of the leading XHTML 
> references. The answers to these questions can be answered by someone 
> who is often broed and looks at the source of web pages in notepad.

"often bored and looks at the source of web pages in notepad"
Great! This is exactly who we want to hire! I'm adding this to the job 
description... ;)

> anyone who seriously wants to design pages is likely to use a design 
> tool that comes with a decent CSS editor. 

Sorry, David Krings, but this is not true. 
Many times you won't have access to a wysiwyg tool.  You may not even 
have access to X (i.e. bash via ssh), and still need to perform work.
What would you do in that situation?


> That is something I'd trust a piece of software to do it correctly.

lol :-D  +1funny!

> That depends, in PHP you'd get a syntax error right in the first line 
> and both a and b remain undefined. 

Do you think you could make sense of it and answer it correctly 
nevertheless, though? It's not meant to be PHP specific...

> Some months ago we had a very lively discussion about how to hire a 
> PHP developer. You may want to look through the list archives. I think 
> we agreed in the end that this question is pointless. 

Sorry I missed that. I will look into it. Thanks.

> I also wonder if you are looking for a web master who runs and 
> configures your servers or if you are looking for a web developer who 
> creates content and writes scripts or if you are looking for both.

Great question!

This is the heart of the question.

Ideally a webmaster will do both (code and admin).  This is what makes 
the job really interesting, in my opinion. This is what attracted me to 
being a webmaster to begin with.
But lately I've been noticing that the profession "webmaster" is 
becoming... old-fashioned?

I attended the "future of web design" conference in NY last year, and a 
constant theme across many speakers was "the need for specialization".

It was stated that webmasters are a dying breed, and that now one should 
hire a web designer, a web developer, and a train a monkey for sysadmin. 
(jk)

I think webmasters need to stand up and be proud of their triple threat 
status!

So, yeah, where have all the webmasters gone?

-André