Is There Really a Difference Between Web Development and Web Design?

 Technology pundits have constantly argued that the terms web development and web design are interchangeable with one another. I respectfully disagree and argue that though the terms may have been interchangeable in the past; they have long since become two terms completely separate from one another with different goals, standards, and philosophies behind them. Web development can be quickly defined as "a broad term for any activity related to developing a website for the World Wide Web or an intranet. This can include e-commerce business development, web design, web content development, and web server configuration"; whereas a definition of web design can be summed up as "a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies" (definitions courtesy of Wikipedia). We can take note of a couple of things simply from these simplified definitions. The first is that web design falls under the wing of web development and it is easy to see why many think the two are intertwined much like the concept that a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. Web design is a part of web development, but not an essential part of developing the web.