After diving into actual HTML this week — I have discovered it is not so hard after all. Of course I save my full review for once I am beyond lesson 1 on Codecademy. Lesson 1 went fairly smooth, with only a few times I had to resort to the “solution” button. It was usually simple stuff that should have been easy to catch. For example, I thought I had this code instruction 100% right and could not figure out why I wasn’t advancing. The issue? I was writing under <h2> instead of <h3>. It’s the little things.

It’s been said that if you can memorize the basic seven tags, you can be pretty fluent in HTML. It’s incredible to me, that these seemingly complex sites can be broken down into a bunch of <p>’s <h>’s and backslashes. I understand that writing will produce an output, but I still struggle with why does the computer/site know how to do that. What does that programming look like?

This week’s dive into (intentional) HTML usage makes me reflect on my youth. I’ll start with MySpace. At the tender age of 8, I was customizing my profile’s HTML with different font styles and colors. How did I forget all that? I have seen interesting literature about these types of introductions into HTML/CSS. That they can actually be more beneficial for adolescents to learn how how to code rather than a Codecademy model. Notably, especially in keeping young girls interested in computer languages. I think this could be an interesting thing to discuss in one of our lectures. In my teen years, I was no longer this expert coder but had my fair share of fun with Google’s inspect element. I once added a class called “Underwater Basket Weaving” to my junior year schedule and posted it to Twitter. People got a kick out of that. I’m excited now, though, to use “inspect element” to actually understand what the heck is going on under this screen.