Self-employed guy who likes to help people and sometimes that means building a website. Ex-college professor. Ex-streaming media guy. Ex-LMS admin. Ex-Performance Support Consultant. Likes beer.
Recovering Higher Ed refugee here, too. You’ve got a good plan.
Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) is your friend. You’ll find great stuff here on Dev, too. My last teaching gig was actually fundamental HTML & CSS and something I’ve really, really enjoyed around here is seeing folks put together educational pieces. Look up Stephanie Eckles (@5t3ph
). She’s been doing some pretty solid stuff.
The thing to keep in mind is that HTML, CSS, and JS are either drinking age or getting there soon. They’ve evolved. But they’re ultimately the outcome of the longest academic committee meeting ever. I think that’s why I like the MDN documentation so much: it explains the why along with the what and doesn’t confuse the two.
It’s a good time to be coming into all of this. Back in the late 90’s when I started teaching web development it was a process of saying “here’s how it works except for all the times it doesn’t.” There’s less of that now. There’s enough new stuff coming along that folks who’ve been at this for a while are having to learn new ways of doing things, so in one way this is the Golden Age of tutorials and explainers. The dark side of that is that a lot of that material assumes a deep familiarity with the “old way” and it makes it tough for someone just coming at it. Rachel Andrews & Jen Simmons are both really good at avoiding that trap. I also can’t recommend the collected works of A Book Apart (and its progenitor A List Apart). Zeldman. Meyer. Marcotte. Folks who basically invented this stuff, are still active and around and still freely share what they know.
But go at like you have so far: all your examples start with the fact that there was something you wanted to say. I’m the world’s worst about going down ratholes, but they tend to be productive ratholes if what I’m researching is a means to an end (as opposed to the other way around). I’m not sure being a web developer is a great goal. Being able to communicate via a medium with a lot of moving parts is.
Looking forward to watching the journey! Always happy to help if I can. But you got this.
Recovering Higher Ed refugee here, too. You’ve got a good plan.
Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) is your friend. You’ll find great stuff here on Dev, too. My last teaching gig was actually fundamental HTML & CSS and something I’ve really, really enjoyed around here is seeing folks put together educational pieces. Look up Stephanie Eckles (@5t3ph ). She’s been doing some pretty solid stuff.
The thing to keep in mind is that HTML, CSS, and JS are either drinking age or getting there soon. They’ve evolved. But they’re ultimately the outcome of the longest academic committee meeting ever. I think that’s why I like the MDN documentation so much: it explains the why along with the what and doesn’t confuse the two.
It’s a good time to be coming into all of this. Back in the late 90’s when I started teaching web development it was a process of saying “here’s how it works except for all the times it doesn’t.” There’s less of that now. There’s enough new stuff coming along that folks who’ve been at this for a while are having to learn new ways of doing things, so in one way this is the Golden Age of tutorials and explainers. The dark side of that is that a lot of that material assumes a deep familiarity with the “old way” and it makes it tough for someone just coming at it. Rachel Andrews & Jen Simmons are both really good at avoiding that trap. I also can’t recommend the collected works of A Book Apart (and its progenitor A List Apart). Zeldman. Meyer. Marcotte. Folks who basically invented this stuff, are still active and around and still freely share what they know.
But go at like you have so far: all your examples start with the fact that there was something you wanted to say. I’m the world’s worst about going down ratholes, but they tend to be productive ratholes if what I’m researching is a means to an end (as opposed to the other way around). I’m not sure being a web developer is a great goal. Being able to communicate via a medium with a lot of moving parts is.
Looking forward to watching the journey! Always happy to help if I can. But you got this.
Thanks, Tom! Your perspective is very helpful! I'll be sure to look up some of the resources you've mentioned.