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Discussion on: Do You Remember Your First Coding Experience?

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern • Edited

My first coding experience was when my friend introduced me to websites with Geocities. I don't remember some of the details of what I did first, but I viscerally remember the shock and awe that this was something I was capable of doing.

I knew that programs and websites got built somehow, but it was completely abstract to me. The realization that it was so accessible was absolutely mind-blowing.

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Sergio Daniel Xalambrí

I built my first website on Geocities too, using MS Word 98 (it had a website mode), good times, filled with gifs, JS snow and custom animated mouse pointers.

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Andrew (he/him)

Ah! You just reminded me of Microsoft Frontpage! I forgot about that. Oh, the repressed memories...

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Ben Halpern

I always used the web editor in Geocities. I don't think I had a home computer at the time so it was mostly school and friends' houses. I didn't really learn FTP or code editors or anything.

I'm truly cloud native.

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Pedro Pimenta

Ahahah indeed, that was the cloud waaaay before we had that term coined :)

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Katie • Edited

I had a relative in computers I asked for help setting up a Geocities/Angelfire like my friend had.

He refused to help me, gave me an account on his webserver Unix box, taught me to use FTP / set up Netscape Navigator's editor to publish to it, and, when I hit a wall with Netscape Navigator's editor, taught me how to edit the HTML of my page for finer-grained control.

Wouldn't help me with the fun unless I picked up some "real programming" along with the fun.

Set me up with an e-mail account on that box, too, and taught me to telnet to it and use Emacs to edit my mail when on someone else's computer instead of on a computer when I had ... boy ... there must've been a mail function in Netscape before Thunderbird came out or something... :-)

I didn't properly program for many years thereafter, but it was a great foundation for later learning. Mission accomplished, picky older relative!

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Jonathan Kuhl

Yep, I had a terrible Calvin and Hobbes Geocities page back in the day. Complete with 1990s marquees and "under construction" gifs.

I also made my first non WYSIWYG webpage in HTML4 to host the games I was trying to make in 3d Gamestudio. I don't remember what I used to host that page though or if it still exists anywhere.

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Andrew (he/him)

Ah, the good old "under construction". Another thing from the early web that I forgot about.

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Katie

And there were whole sites w/ great GIFs where you could get cooler "under construction" symbols & dividers than your friends had!

Or where your friends had gotten cool ones and wouldn't tell you about their source.

And wouldn't talk to you at lunch the next day if you just downloaded from their page and used the cool icon/divider on your page without their blessing.

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dAVE Inden

Geocities was my first experience too. My friend showed it to me and we talked about HTML and FTP and it was all so cool. The internet was really new to me at this time, ~1996, and it was amazing to see how websites were built and that I could do it myself.

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Andrew (he/him)

The ability to add your favorite My Chemical Romance song as background music on your blog was the height of 😎 in 2007.