Thanks for the feedback! We'll certainly work on the points you mentioned, although validation is no goal in itself for us.
We just hired our first frontend developer actually, so far we are still recycling the original (very well validating) templates an external agency made for us, but of course over time they've "broken" in terms of validation.
Optimizing is something we'll do for sure in our redesign since we'll redo all the HTML anyway. My guess is that it won't be a hefty difference as you suggest, since our pages already load in 1,6s on average for NL users (via Pingdom).
We can go a bit further in caching with Nginx too btw.
On your last point: to a certain extent it's true that the SEO or other marketing guys can also make tests. But in practice, for the most interesing tests you really need a frontender, the basic stuff you can do with VWO and some CSS hackery doesn't bring us much anymore.
Be sure that we try to eat our plate, but we won't eat it for the sake of emptying it. Desert might be more efficient, and there's always the next meal (day) with new opportunities that need chasing. You're 100% right in theory, but not in practice :)
The talk / post is meant for frontend developers. So if you're a great frontend developer, and you have these skills, I'm sure you're worth millions. My whole point is that simply churning out HMTML/CSS/JS isn't enough anymore, you need more skills these days...
On your last bit: I think clients indeed wo't pay for stuff like that, yet. They're learn the coming years that you either have to have a dev team (incl. front-enders!) in-house, or you should work with your agencies like they share your goals. Only then will they start to appreciate things like code quality...
The disclaimer is not actually to be read, it's just a joke to say that I am just listing skills as I see them, from my limited perspective as a business-owner :)
Optimizing is something we'll do for sure in our redesign since we'll redo all the HTML anyway. My guess is that it won't be a hefty difference as you suggest, since our pages already load in 1,6s on average for NL users (via Pingdom).
We can go a bit further in caching with Nginx too btw.
On your last point: to a certain extent it's true that the SEO or other marketing guys can also make tests. But in practice, for the most interesing tests you really need a frontender, the basic stuff you can do with VWO and some CSS hackery doesn't bring us much anymore.
Be sure that we try to eat our plate, but we won't eat it for the sake of emptying it. Desert might be more efficient, and there's always the next meal (day) with new opportunities that need chasing. You're 100% right in theory, but not in practice :)