Making websites, explained like you are five.
When I was teaching myself to code, I was amazed at how many incredible resources there were, for free, on the internet. Brilliant sites, like Codecademy and Dash by General Assembly, where you can complete code exercises as you learn.
I loved it. I learn by doing, so sitting there for hours solving puzzles with code was actually fun. I went through the entire Codecademy catalogue which was, back then, entirely free. JavaScript, HTML and CSS, Ruby, Python. Whatever I could get my hands on. (I loved the JavaScript course so much, I did it twice 🤓)
But once I reached the end, I was confused. What now? Was I a developer? I certainly didn’t feel like one. I still didn’t actually know how to make a website. Surely that was what I had been trying to learn the whole time?
Eventually, I asked someone on in the r/webdev subreddit for advice, and they said this: “Codecademy is useless. You won’t learn unless you get real hands-on experience. Just make your own website and learn from there.”
Great. Thank you, internet stranger.
The thing is, they weren’t entirely wrong. 8 years later (and two years into my new career as a web developer), I understand exactly what they mean. Even though it’s now my job to make websites, I am still learning by doing. I’m just getting paid for it. But at the time I couldn’t just “make my own website” because it was clear I was missing some vital information. And I couldn’t just google it because I didn’t know what I was even searching for.
If you search for “make a website”, it’s going to give you Squarespace, and WordPress, and a hundred other drag-and-drop website builders.
I’m a bit embarrassed to say I nearly gave up at this point. I didn’t really want to ask anyone, especially not on the internet, because I wasn’t even sure what I was asking. And internet people can be mean. Any conversations I tried went something like this:
Me: I can write JavaScript. And HTML and CSS. How do I build a website?
Them: Great, that’s really all you need at this point.
Me: … Cool. Um, but now what do I do?
Them: Well you could learn React. Or PHP maybe, if you want to build a CMS.
Me: No, I mean, how do I build a website?
Them: What are you talking about? You just said you write HTML and CSS!
Me: …
Now, if you’re a developer, you may not ever remember being in this position. Maybe you weren’t. I feel like this might be something fairly exclusive to people who have learned by themselves using sites like Codecademy. You may not realise what I’m getting at is that I didn’t know where to write code on my computer and how to see it in a browser.
I’m not even talking about setting up a web server. At 23, just starting to learn programming for the first time, I didn’t actually know about text editors. Well I did, I just didn’t know what the point of them was. And I certainly didn’t know I just needed to save it with the right file extension and then… well, open it. In my browser. 🤷🏻♀️
Today I’m learning some cool WebGL animation stuff. It’s all very interesting and I’m following a really well-written tutorial. But there was an instruction that just didn’t make sense to me. I do what with the… what?
And I had a bit of a flashback to when I was just starting out and how I always felt like I was treading water, badly. I thought about all of the amazing tutorials, blogs, videos and documentation that has helped me over the years. And I thought… maybe there are people like me, trying to learn from fantastic resources like Codecademy and there’s just this gap in their knowledge. They can’t ask, because they don’t even know what the right questions are. People who that think their questions are too dumb to ask. They’re not even sure how to word them because they don’t have the vocabulary, or the confidence in what they’re saying.
I might be wrong. It might just have been me. But in case it’s not, I’m going to start writing little tutorials. Not massive long posts on HOW TO DO THIS REALLY COMPLICATED THING IN WHAT IS DEFINITELY 100% THE RIGHT WAY, but little things. It will definitely not be the only way of doing the thing, but is definitely at least a way. And a way that I use in my job, without anyone laughing at me or thinking I’m an idiot.
And I can’t promise I’ll write these regularly, and at some point I should probably get on with building my own website with a blog, rather than having a “Coming soon” page on bekahmcdonald.com that sort of breaks on mobile (I did it in 2 minutes, okay?), but what I can promise is that I will explain things like you’re five.
PS. The cover image was drawn for me by my sister’s kid, who knows exactly what a website is, and decided it should feature a wedding dress.
