My good friend Eivin recently highlighted something in my work life that I hadn't even thought about before.

I've always been envious of his ability to code, to program and ability to script. I've always been a visual artist, being able to create with my hands and be able to get a style across [if I wanted to make an image, I have a process of using handmade elements in most of my work].

But coding really gives you limitless talents, you can think of an idea and implement it. it's as simple as that, everything related to technology has been programmed, everything web based is programmed. which leads me to my point here. I lack the ability to make ideas I want from the online world because I never took the time to do the maths. Instead I spent many many hours learning how to animate and create visual things, things that were not always destined to end up on the 9" of tablet I'm typing this on.

Until I started doing web design in 2008. that's when I started to subconsciously learn to 'code'. I learnt what the base of my web design process has become today from @therealfickers, which seems quite logical. you design a website via photoshop [or more recently, fireworks] and then you translate that to code and CSS to get a finished website. now this is where my realisation kicks in. for years now, I've been designing and developing sites myself, and learning how to do what I need to do along the way. enough so, that now, I don't have any problems with CSS. its a language that I can speak to you, albeit you'd give me a funny look, but heck...

.speak{content:"it would be far funnier drunk, especially if the person on the receiving end understood what I was saying!";}

I find it easy enough now that I can solved retry much any problem that I'm faced with. In taking to Eivin, he claims that CSS doesn't make sense [this is coming from a guy who coded his way through university]. apparently, there are rules with CSS, limitations that say you must either display: block; or display: inline; etc. with php, you can tell it to do math, variables, booleans, floats (css can only float left and right like some form of platform game) the are no limits, no rules.

now I know that this is true, but with rules, all it takes is simple logic to work out how to do pretty much anything you want in relation to design. it's these rules that give you the ability to make something, I cant imaging starting a website and having to build the tools you need to build the site, to me, THAT seems to not make sense.