I was having a casual meal and conversation with an old high-school friend, when he said something I could never forget:
Everyone knows HTML.
To this shocking statement, I said, "What do you mean?"
"You know," he said, "Everyone was on MySpace at some point."
I know what you're thinking: why didn't I flip the table right then at that outrageous statement? Truth be told, it is a very heavy table and I would look stupid trying.
Instead, I recalled another similar moment, when someone else with no developer experience felt he could network his way into a high-paying tech job by talking to software engineers about his 'coding' experience tweaking HTML templates in a CMS.
And then it occurred to me: maybe my friend had a point.
Maybe everyone thinks they know HTML.
Why I thought I knew HTML
When I was a teenager, I was on the wrong path, too.
In middle school, I made web pages for my Neopets. I also customized forum pages by replacing Hex colors.
I knew what <p>s, <img>s, <a>s, <div>s, and <span>s were.
Therefore, I was an expert.
Top comments (0)