Why don’t students care about web development anymore? Think Wix. Think Squarespace.
As budding entrepreneurs with full-time college schedules, all of our goals are time-sensitive. Everything we want to do — from our businesses to playing catch-up with student loans — is fast, furious, and scary. Yet, risk-taking is something we aren’t afraid of. Secretary Hillary Clinton named the millennial generation to be the most
“diverse and entrepreneurial generation in our country’s history.”
55% of survey respondents agreed with her. I mean, what else do we have to lose? Between the thousands of dollars going towards college, a couple more bucks and sleepless nights are nothing. With simple, easy-to-use web development platforms, showing the world your new business is only a click-and-drop away. These platforms are so easy that HTML & CSS aren’t in any student’s learning interest anymore. It’s no longer a simple baseline on a resume; it is seen as a computer scientist’s tool.
Let’s back it up. For those having a little brain fart, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a standardized system for writing and designing web pages through tagging in order to achieve font, color, graphic, and hyperlink effects. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a stylesheet language used for writing and designing the presentation of a web page written in a markup language (i.e. HTML).
What’s the point of HTML and CSS?
Well, lots. Other than using it to build websites, they are the ideal language to start off with for newbie coders. It’s easy to visualize, the syntax is easy to learn, and it has a natural layout that we humans are accustomed to. All developers code from scratch using this dynamic pair in order to personalize/design with full freedom. And emphasis on “dynamic.” HTML and CSS may be the perfect languages for beginners to learn, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful. My good friend, Ranier Gran, built a GUI that predicted hockey game outcomes using head-to-head data for the NHL (National Hockey League) for the Microsoft Athletech Challenge that took the cake! It was composed of 90% HTML and CSS.
“Well it’s just that, really. Making a web application like that was came very easy using html and css. There is plenty of documentation online to learn quickly and you can create some pretty powerful and elegant applications.”
Of course, there are several languages that are great for web development. Many say Python, Ruby on Rails and JavaScript have their own styling that they like to stick to standard for web design, but HTML and CSS have been the constant and a great launching pad, especially for learning harder languages. It is simply a great tool to have in your back pocket for any job that you enter. Making a website, a dynamic website, is always a needed skill.
So, how do I know to choose between learning HTML & CSS and using the simpler web development platforms?
Here are a few things to think about when deciding if quickly using a website-building platform is worth it:
- Know your personal growth goal.
- Know your current business’s goal.
- Know your timeframe.
If your short term goal is to simply create a landing page or website where its sole purpose is to be informative, then using sites like Weebly, Wix, or Squarespace would be ideal as it cuts production time greatly. You are not writing the code and everything is pre-designed in forms of templates or color schemes. But, if you want to learn how to make dynamic websites and applications that truly engage your visitors/customers, then learning HTML & CSS is crucial to bringing that website to life.
There is a healthy medium (ha, ha) as well! As a self-proclaimed designer, I like to look at other websites and web development platforms in order to get inspiration for my own designs. Furthermore, websites like WordPress allow you to create some pretty powerful websites with knowing much code. Again, inspiration and imagination. Along the way, you will end up learning basic HTML/CSS coding. As the millennial mogul Hannah Montana said, “You got the best of both worlds!”
Online Free Tools to Learn HTML/CSS
…and the list goes on. Happy coding and money-making!
Works Cited
https://blogs.adobe.com/dreamweaver/files/2015/08/dw_blank-screen_scl.jpg
Lynn Luong is a student assistant at the Hofstra Center for Entrepreneurship and president of Hofstra University StartUps, a student-run organization working in conjunction with the HUb. As a hacker, tech startups lie close to her heart and hackathons take up her free time.
