We should rethink how we teach people to code | deadSimpleTech 

(on using HTML as a first coding experience)

Got this link from alis.me, where they cringe at HTML but also say, "...actually, yeah, huh...they have a point."

Like Alis, I learned basic HTML because I wanted to make a page on Geocities.  That was it.

And it worked!  HTML was easy for me, a total coding newb, to learn and use!  I made my little page, with its very simple formatting and hand-coded list of links to individual pages with my individual fanfics on them, with my little webring images/links on the bottom.  It was fun and I felt like I had MADE A THING!  A thing that I kept until Fanfiction.net made posting fanfic (and actually having people read it) easier.

So even though that page came and went...I still use what I remember of HTML, and I've continued to use it throughout my life.

I used it on Livejournal to make my own journal templates and code in my italics and quotes and stuff before we had rich text post editors.  I used it on PILLOWFORT for cripes sake, to help apply a style somewhere, I think.

I also feel that crappy HTML website honestly taught me a lot about how the web works, and how to be resilient and independent later in the age of "you don't need to know how this works, just use our slick app where you can customize only the things we want you to!"  ("Yeah, fuck you", says the girl who coded her own shitty webpages back in the day and spent a lot of time figuring out how to get the colors on her LJ page JUST RIGHT.)

It also gives me...I dunno, appreciation for hand-made things.  Yes, maybe that webpage was a bit janky, but it was MY JANK.  I knew it was there and if I didn't fix it, it was probably because it didn't really bother me that much.  It was an inoculation against perfection and against perfectionism.

And the HTML gateway drug has been actually useful in real life, too.  In addition to being able to handcode a link by muscle memory if it's convenient, I have also multiple times run into instances where it was actually professionally useful. I still remember being the savior who helped my professor force his submitted abstract to properly format his gene names because though he had to paste it into a plaintext input box, I was the one who realized that it was a plaintext box that would parse html tags. 

Basic web coding also leads to better computer literacy and the most useful skill of "not being afraid of poking about in settings", which has put me head and shoulders above so many others who are "afraid they'll break it" and thus never understand how their software works or half the settings it offers.  Having to find my own jpegs and such directly led to knowing how to screencap something and crop it for a "good enough" web or presentation graphic (I was a minor celebrity at my last job for showing people how to do just that.)  Needing to crop or resize things also led to teaching myself use of basic image editors (reinforced by needing to make my own LJ icons, of course), which helped a lot when PowerPoint and Illustrator became a thing.

Heck, being on Livejournal also taught me about RSS feeds, which the modern internet can pry from my COLD DEAD HANDS.  Fuck their algorithm, roll your own!  (I use Feedly, but I dunno, they might be a paid thing now?  IDEK.)

And really...I'm literally thinking of brushing up on my web coding NOW (or at least my "tweak this template" version of coding) to make myself a basic professional writing portfolio page.

So yeah.  Learning HTML HAS been useful.  The problems I had to fix are probably somewhat not problems anymore on the modern web, but the modern web has new problems, amirite?  And one of those is people hating the slick corporatism all around them.  I mean...I'm charmed as hell every time I'm reminded that Neocities exists.

Go forth.  Make A Thing.