Write good HTML code, you backend developer

By Carlo Ascani
Jan 08, 2015
Applications

"HTML is not a real language", "HTML is not for real men", "HTML sucks", "OMG it has not tracebacks!". These are just a few quotes hanging around the IT.

The myths about HTML

If you are a backend developer, you should be aware of some myths that are still quite popular.

I can choose HTML tags and throw in the template like I just don’t care
Tag choosing is a waste of time, <div> and <section> are equals, to the user point of view
What is <section>?
Tag order and hierarchy is not important, because HTML has not constraints about that

How the real things go

When you backend developer are coding HTML templates, you are most likely writing weird code.

You want to see your backend data on screen, you simply do not pay attention to HTML code.

That is why frontend developers exist.

But hey, I dropped Bootstrap in my project, thus I am done

Just wrong! Bootstrap or a similar framework can help you, but that is not enough to write good, semantic and modern HTML5 code.

In many cases, bootstrap HTML5 markup is not as good as you think.

But hey, I read on stackoverflow that…

Wait! Stackoverflow driven development may be good for javascript, not for HTML5.

Some advices for you backend developer

These are some tips that may help you release in the market good, semantic and modern HTML5 code.

We got this list from our experience, and it may be a lot different from yours :).

In Nephila, we used to follow these, and we hope results may be visible:

Talk to your frontend developer
Discuss with him before dropping in a whatever HTML framework.
Use git for everything, also for mokup drawings and analysis text files

Do not touch the damn CSS! Just accept that you have not aesthetic sense.

If you are not lucky, and there is not any frontend developer around, just study HTML5. You should know the meaning of new tags, you should check for new tags compatibility, you should know what tags are depecrated.

An essential reading is HTML5: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition.

Another approach may be to drop data in templates without tags and let him (the frontend developer) code the HTML.

Conclusions

I hope you got the humor in this article.

Being serious, we think that talking to each other is a foundamental part of a project to be successfully delivered in time and to get a high quality code.