I have to agree with this hard-line stance from Chris Coyier on the subject of view source:

I literally don’t care at all about View Source and wouldn’t miss it if it was removed from browsers. I live in DevTools, and I’ll bet you do too.

I want my website to arrive at light speed on a tiny spec of magical network packet dust and blossom into a complete website. Or do whatever computer science deems is the absolute fastest way to send website data between computers.

I’m much more worried about the state of web performance than I am about web education. But even if I was very worried about web education, I don’t think it’s the network’s job to deliver teachability.

What about you? Is view source more important than web performance? Is DevTools a worthy replacement for view source?

Chris also cites comments on the subject from Tom Dale, Jonathan Snook, and Chris Heilmann.