Getting started.

Hello there! Yep, here I am again positively brimming with absolute piffle, I could see a doctor about that or instead divulge some handy first steps into the crèche that is web development! Getting started in this sometimes baffling and unfriendly world of code can be extremely daunting with an absolute sea of acronyms (Which fellow dev’s often forget to define, tut-tut the silly AYWIT’s) and technical jargon that can frankly make one want to run up that hill with Kate Bush and hide. What I shall aim to do here is simplify the process to make it all seem like a picnic. Without the wasps.

First things first, what is the Web made out of? Yes, that’s right, CODE! Yipee. More specifically HTML (HyperText Markup Language), which is the underlying structure of a web page, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which provides the styling, and finally Javascript (in 98% of cases) which provides background functionality. So if a website were a house the roof, walls etc is HTML, the furniture and wallpaper is CSS and the plumbing/electrics etc is Javascript. To begin with concentrate on these technologies and try to ignore all the other coding languages and frameworks people wave at you with varying degrees of urgency, they aren’t important. Yet.

Where can I learn of these mystic runes? Well the internet of course! Personally I found these (free!) resources invaluable at the start and continue to do so when I need a refresh:

• Youtube: There is a figurative ocean of information here and you could end up trawling the site for hours but I found Traversy Media and Kevin Powell are two content creators that really caught my attention as providing excellent tuition for the newbie Cod-er (enough of this nautical punning for now).
• Codecademy: Codecademy is an interactive online platform for learning to code (mental with a name like that), offering free and paid beginner-friendly courses with in-browser coding challenges so you can learn all about what a pain in the arse a misplaced colon can be.
• Frontend Mentor: This is a great place that provides designs and assets for building site pages of varying complexity. By coding their projects, you’ll create real portfolio pieces while honing your abilities, so you’ll have something shiny to show for your efforts, which is nice.

Wait a second, surely you need a tool to write your own code? Indeed you do! These technologies are called IDE’s (Integrated Development Environment’s) and I’m not going to waste your time gabbling on about different ones: Get Visual Studio Code (The Code bit is important as Visual Studio is different). VS Code is free, it’s widely used and it had a plethora of extensions to make your life easier, I may write another blog about the ones I use at some point if you’re lucky.

So you have your tool (IDE) and you’ve learnt enough to build a site, or so you thought! Why won’t it work? Well I haven’t the foggiest but sometimes (quite often in my experience), a quick Google and a hop over to MDN Web Docs, W3Schools or stack overflow will have the answers you are looking for. And if you are feeling particularly futuristic why not ask ChatGPT or one of the other new Artificial Intelligences (I have no idea how to pluralise that, does it need an apostrophe? If so here’s one for you to insert wherever you deem fit ’) as they seemingly have all the answers, but be wary as sometimes they talk more bunkum than me!

There you have it! Enough information to grow you from a Web Baby (possible spiderman spin off?) to a Web Toddler (The sequel??) and perhaps beyond! (It’s a whole damn franchise I tell you!!), the main things to remember is to be patient and try to enjoy your experience by building things that interest you and use the many resources at your disposal. I think that is enough from me this week, I hope that some of this helps some of you and doesn’t bore the rest of you to tears! Have a cracking week, Alley-oop!