I myself am first and foremost artistic and creative, having skills in illustration and graphic design, but unlike others I’ve embraced coding and backend development – and so far it’s paying off.

Instead of asking someone to code my portfolio for me, I can do it myself, and that knowledge is just gonna get bigger and benefit me more and more in the future.

Personally, I wish that people didn’t promote themselves as a ‘frontend developer’ or in contrast a ‘backend developer’, to me it just seems like the frontend developer is saying ‘I can create a pretty design that keeps up with design standards and up-to-date typography, but can’t slice it up and code it for you’, and the backend developer is saying ‘I can’t design at all, but I sure know the ins and outs of a website’.

Why not aim to be both? I mean, it’s not such a hard thing sometimes (perhaps if you’re not creatively inclined it might) when you put in the hours.

But like you’ve been saying, knowing at least the basics of any developmental coding languages is something that designers should truly consider looking into.

In other words, is it better to learn a range of skills, or to hone your understanding of one very particular skillset?

I tend to find web designers who can’t code ridiculous, purely because I think basic coding skills should actually be considered a core part of the “web designer” skillset. But what about Rails or Objective-C? It’s probably useful as a designer to spend the time to sketch out what you consider your core skillset, then branch out until the point at which the skills gained cease to enhance or clearly augment your core skills.

All obvious stuff, but it tends to get muddy depending on the level at which you’re working, time constraints, etc etc.