So the other day, my hot water heater started leaking. This, in and of itself, isn’t a major thing. Turned it off and figured we’d replace it. Then I started talking about figuring out how to have a colleague who’s done this kind of thing before come over and help me put it together and do the install work. I was talking about all the money it would save and how it would be beneficial to know how this kind of thing was done. Then my wife says, “You know, I was thinking of building a website myself…” and the next morning I called the plumber to come and put in the hot water heater.

See, this is something I’ve often said to others who were talking about doing their own website design and development. Personally, I’m not a designer and I know what my designs turn out looking like. But I’m a heck of a developer if I do say so myself. I know what I’m doing when it comes to working under the hood on a website. When the plumber came he had to make some adjustments to the pipes and add in something called an overflow tank because the code had changed for hot water heaters from when my initial hot water heater had been installed. I wouldn’t have known that. If you’re a developer, think of all the things that have changed related to your field in the last 30 days, let alone 6 months? Pretty staggering huh? Those are the things we use that earn us our paychecks. That’s where the true knowledge comes in in keeping up with what’s going on in the field.

So the next time someone says that their going to just do it themselves when it comes to web development, try to make them think of it in terms of their own industry and what they know and what might have changed in what they do over the last 6 months. It might just turn them around to seeing things in a different light.