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by mooze 4667 days ago
Tutorials are all very well, but what we really need is the programming equivalent of Geocities or Diaryland. That's how many of us got started with HTML and CSS - by making stuff and trying to get it to look nice.

Ideally this place would take care of the back end and provide a few basic components (e.g. pages, views) for you to structure your app. There would be code boxes for you to type into, and once you click save you'd be able to view and use the app at username.site.com. At first you might piece together a program out of pre-written components via point-and-click, then you might tweak the code to better serve your app, later on you'll get bored with the presets and start writing your own functions...eventually you'll learn to code from scratch.

There are tools that come close to this (GAE for example), but nothing at the absolute-beginner-anyone-can-do-this level.