[Vendek]

First of all, HTML and CSS is not coding, and second it won't result in a 'serviceable website' as sites need to be dynamic these days, and you won't get paid for a static website anyway. This is a bad post and the author should feel bad.

[nbashaw]

I kind of feel bad that the switch from "learn to code" to "why schools work" was so jarring. I definitely need to do a better job making it a bit more skim-able. But I definitely don't feel bad about advising people to start learning to code by learning HTML and CSS if their goal is to eventually learn to build web-apps.

It certainly is coding in the most literal sense of writing code to be interpreted by a computer, although it's not a programming language. You are correct about that. Nevertheless, it's a great starting place for beginners.

You definitely can get paid for building static websites. Somehow I did.

[harrygold]

Thanks for the good article. It definitely resonates with me and I will be trying to develop some habits in the next 30 days (every day). I am certainly not an absolute beginner (I know some html and css)but I am not a programmer at all and your article gives me some food for thought as I embark on learning a bit about javascript.

[nbashaw]

Awesome! I'm glad you got something out of it. If you ever want to chat about strategies email me! nbashaw [at] gmail

[yawn]

What? Did you read the whole article? An excerpt: "all roads lead to HTML and CSS... Once you understand that, then you can move on to Javascript, Ruby, Python, or whatever else you want."

This sounds logical and correct to me.

[Vendek]

It is the opposite of logical because that would be doing it ass backwards. You don't need to learn HTML, your web app that you make while, you know, actually learning how to code, will generate it. Prettifying it with some CSS can be googled after you have something that actually works and has a purpose.

[drcube]

Can you write a web app without knowing HTML and CSS? And how about reading the next sentence?

>Once you understand that, then you can move on to Javascript, Ruby, Python, or whatever else you want.

[eertami]

I guess it's still cool to exclude PHP despite it being the most obvious.