<![endif] Melting Asphalt end of #logo About Archive Goodies Subscribe end of #header end of #header-outer by Kevin Simler In a beautiful, rollicking piece last month for Aeon Magazine, web developer James Somers ponders the question, Are coders worth it? The piece is a thinking man's struggle to understand the value of his profession. By Somers' own reckoning, his accounts are out of balance. He's paid handsomely, but the work is trivial. As he says: Most of what we’re doing, in fact, is putting boxes on a page.... We fill our days with the humdrum upkeep of these boxes: we change the colours; we add a link to let you edit some text; we track how far you scroll down the page.... Web development is more like plumbing than any of us, perched in front of two slick monitors, would care to admit. Somers' anguish is palpable, and his catalogue of self-effacing remar...