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by al_borland 617 days ago
I think CSS and JS should be things the user graduates to when they decide they need them, if they ever do.

Show someone basic HTML and most people will eventually look at their page and think, “this is neat, but how to I make this title red and change the background?” This is when to introduce the very basics of CSS.

If someone has a goal the learning process is easier and more exciting, because it’s relevant and allows them to learn something to give them a result they already want. Learning to learn is hard.
2 comments
bob1029 616 days ago
I think teaching all 3 at once is better. You can take a really simple vertical slice to demonstrate how they interact to compose the DOM. Then, spend the next 2 weeks inside dev tools explaining how to navigate the DOM and browser state. Establishing mapping between dev tools and the examples is where self sufficiency becomes feasible.

I agree you can pretty much get there with plain HTML academically and in concept work, but this is not a helpful (or exciting) perspective for someone who is likely to be tasked with building non-trivial sites for others. A little bit of color and movement can go a long way in keeping the apprentice's attention.

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al_borland 616 days ago
If we are talking about non-technical people simply making documents for the web, I don’t think they ever really need to know what the DOM, dev tools, or state is. They’ll never really run into that, as the sites will be rather trivial, and that’s ok.

For someone looking to be a web developer, I can see where some would need a faster ramp up to hold their interest, but they should also still know that it can be this simple. I saw a video not long ago where someone asked a bunch of people who just finished a web dev bootcamp to make a basic HTML file and put it on the web, much like what this tutorial does in the first couple steps. Most of them couldn’t do it. If someone can make a page using React, but can’t make a simple HTML page, I think that’s a problem. It leads to a lot of overly complex solutions, because they were never taught how simple it can really be.

Even for technical folks, their area of expertise may fall outside of the web, but they still want a web page to share information. The basics are perfect and often used. Dennis Ritchie’s page was a perfect example of that. A lot of people from this era have similar sites.

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/

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stego-tech 616 days ago
I'm not sure we want to onboard non-technical people into such things right off the bat. Keeping things simple - notepad and HTML - gives everyone the ability to carve out a rudimentary niche for themselves, which is the goal. If they're still interested in this field - either just as a hobby, or as a career - then they'll at least have a solid understanding of the foundational topic and know where they want to go from there.

Remember, the goal isn't to make everyone a competent developer, just enabling everyone to participate without going through a corporation for basic web services.

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card_zero 616 days ago
Party like it's 1999:

  <BODY BGCOLOR="#FF00FF">
  <FONT COLOR="#FF0000">
  <H1>My First Heading</H1>
  </FONT>
https://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html
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