[iamwil]

Of course it's interesting, but especially if you think of the context and a broader scope when you look beyond the immediate story. I'll start with the smallest scope and zoom out.

On its face, it's a person talking about their personal accomplishment in making a static HTML/CSS website--something that you seems minor to you as a professional that has been doing it for as as long as you have--but I think you forgot the original thrill you got when you first got your TRS-80 to work. Being able to see the thrill of a beginner again should remind you of your own personal thrills. To have more people be able to code, and to speak the same basic language is a good thing. How many times have you wished your manager knew just a bit of coding, so he's not whipping you on why you took 2 weeks to debug that concurrent code and ended up only changing one line?

At a broader level, many of us are programmers, but we're not programmers in a vacuum. Few of us make things only just for ourselves, and being able to be a better programmer often is being able to relate and empathize with users. In addition, seeing programming again from the eyes of a beginner will often teach you much about what is difficult and what is not, because you've been dulled to the pain for so long. Beginners remind us to rethink assumptions we have, and whether they're still valid.

And lastly, at the biggest scope, software is eating the world. Many of the middle class work and jobs are being replaced with automation, and the OP is a small drop in the river of people realizing this, and scrambling to learn. If you're an entrepreneur, this is especially interesting because there's a demand and a need for education for a different audience, and that is opportunity.

In reference to accessibility, I think it is important. I agree that hard stuff is hard. There are no shortcuts to mastering something. But it doesn't mean that getting started has to be hard. Many of the cultural influences on society nowadays has been made simply due to accessibility to technology. When you democratize a technology for the masses, sure you're going to get lots and lots of crap. But there's no limited warehouse on the internet, and we have the ability to float cream to the top with search, aggregators and other tools. Without this phenomenon, many of the blogs you read on a daily basis wouldn't be on HN for you. Many of the youtube videos that you learned something from or were entertained by wouldn't be there. Because, if accessibility isn't important, then "hey, just setup an Apache web server and FTP it there."

If accessibility isn't important, you might as well drive a car by timing the firing of the pistons, rather than stepping on the gas pedal.

[mb_72]

As a beginner to programming I had enough self-awareness to realise that my achievements were of little to no interest to those with more ability and experience, and certainly would not have been worth publishing in a magazine (as the equivalent would have been at the time). This is 'Hacker news' - but these days the word 'Hacker' has been diluted in meaning to something that doesn't really mean 'hacking' any more.

The car metaphor is not a valid comparison - we are not talking about the operation of a tool, but gaining of skills in an area that requires both natural and learned abilities.

[iamwil]

I think you identify as a programmer and hacker, and things that encroach on that identity--such as beginners doing html/css calling it programming--causes you discomfort. And that blinds you to the interesting things about this.

Of course it is. Driving is a skill. You only consider driving the operation of a tool rather than a skill because its accessibility is so good.

[mb_72]

It causes me discomfort, yes, because if a beginner over-estimates what they are doing then they are in for more disappointment when they discover what they are really doing.