Re:It’s 1997 and you want to build a website
by KronisLV on Wednesday July 06, 2022 @05:29AM
(#31998627)
> First I used the wysiwyg mode, but then discovered the editor had auto completion! Suddenly I could write HTML properly.
I think this is more or less an argument in favor of tools that are helpful to the developer, like feature rich IDEs with parameter hints and autocomplete/suggestions, text editors with plugins that give you a similar experience or even a little bit of AI help.
Some people have the attitude that you might want to learn a language/framework with just a text editor to know the internals, but I think that if you want results fast and focus on solving problems (getting the site up and running) quickly, then tools like these are invaluable!
Re:It’s 1997 and you want to build a website
by matsemann on Wednesday July 06, 2022 @01:39PM
(#32004259)
Yeah, for me being a noob it was hard to learn as I didn't know what and where to start. Not much material, at least not in my native language and suitable for a kid. So I learned by brute-force. I applied each and every auto-complete CSS-statement and looked what it did. I didn't know or think of there actually being a reference somewhere online. But testing them, I found the "cool" ones (especially border style, applied it to everything!) and could use them.
To actually host the page, ~10 old me didn't know what to do. But a relative in Denmark had suddenly become the "webmaster" for her local government, and gotten to learn some stuff.
Remotely teaching me ftp or ssh was out of the question, but I got tipped about Tripod/Lycos. They had an online interface where I could upload a file! And then later she showed me how to apply for dot.tk and have my very own domain. Very cool 8)
Was a bit dormant, though. What more could I do than adding some texts and under construction gifs?
Then the Harry Potter craze hit. Lots of people made cool websites, and I wanted to join! To up the game, me and a friend made stuff in FrontPage. Still manually uploading one and one file through Tripod's web interface. I could do so much more than the little HTML I had managed to do in Notepad! Then I later got to spend a day shadowing a professional web developer, and she gave me the CD for the previous version of Dreamweaver! First I used the wysiwyg mode, but then discovered the editor had auto completion! Suddenly I could write HTML properly.
As many others, my Harry Potter page was a "school" where people could do stuff and earn house points. But not knowing programming, everything was static and I had to manually edit and reupload files. Luckily only like two friends used the page hehe. But other HP pages were dynamic! How? I had to learn PHP!
-
As an aside, it's curious how many of those professionals I interacted with the first years were women. Companies/govagencies felt they needed a presence, but didn't care much, and just gave the task to someone else already doing communication/admin work. And they learned on the job and suddenly became the first experts here.