Who’s using Dreamweaver then?

Here’s a good interview in the New York Times for the web buffs among us, but it also has some interest for those who aren’t so tech-savvy.

The interview chats to Mr Khoi Vinh, design director of NYTimes.com, and is about how they came to build the New York Times website.

I’m basing this on little more on my own opinion, but I can safely say the New York Times website is the best newspaper site in the world. It’s incredible. Spend a few moments surfing around their multimedia and admire how great it is. It’s a style of publishing that journalism students everywhere should be learning to emulate.

Dug within the interview lies yet another comment which substansiates the claim that Dreamweaver is a tool that, really, shouldn’t be taught in our online classes.

Vinh says:

“It’s our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to ‘hand code’everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.”

So, in summary, web designers aren’t using Dreamweaver. Web journalists aren’t using Dreamweaver. Indeed it seems nobody in the industry is using it. Which begs the question, why do so many journo-institutions insist on teaching it? I’m truly baffled.