Hello smart people who I do not know. I'm new to computer science.

[GreatMinds]

Hello smart people who I do not know. I'm kinda new to computer science, and I need to start learning a language/s... I was hoping to learn HTML first because I wanted to start a website, so could anyone give me a link or name of a book or something to help?

 

[Math Is Hard]

w3 schools is a pretty good resource for this.

http://www.w3schools.com

 

[GreatMinds]

Thanks.

 

[Cowtipper]

www.htmlgoodies.com is a wonderful resource. I highly recommend it.

HTML is really quite simple to learn too - have fun with it. It's really quite the nifty language.

 

[chroot]

In fairness, it's not a programming language at all. If you're going to go to school to study computer science, you might do a little HTML in an "introduction to networking" class, but it's not going to be a significant part of your curriculum. Learning HTML will also do nothing to prepare you for any actual programming language.

If your desire is to learn how to program, skip HTML and learn something like Python instead. Designing websites by hand is practically an ancient concept now -- just use an HTML editor like everyone else.

- Warren

 

[Cowtipper]

Python? Python?! Haha, learn something useless and unneccessary.

Like BF.

 

[chroot]

Are you suggesting that Python is useless and unnecessary?

- Warren

 

[Cowtipper]

No, no. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was actually saying that the programming language I mentioned, "BF" was useless, haha.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Designing websites by hand is practically an ancient concept now -- just use an HTML editor like everyone else.

mmmmm I'd still learn HTML/CSS, great for tweaking when an editor just won't do what you want.

 

[-Job-]

Most css/html done in web design companies is actually done by hand. A WYSIWYG editor is good for working on your own site and trying to work out a good layout, but in a professional setting this is usually done by artists and designers in photoshop or similar app anyway and when they're converted to css/html it's better done by hand to avoid the bulky inefficient code that editors generate.

 

[CRGreathouse]

[...] just use an HTML editor like everyone else.

A single tear runs down CRGreathouse's cheek...

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

A single tear runs down CRGreathouse's cheek...

and somewhere in the distance a wolf cub howls...

 

[deltawing1]

HTML isn't a programming language but a markup "language". It's simply a way to structure a web page. You can learn HTML in a few hours so it shouldn't be a problem :)

When it comes to programming languages (the comp sci & software engineering stuff), I really, really think you should start with an object oriented language such as Python, Java or C++. This is because if you start with a procedural language it could be harder to grasp OOP concepts later, as I have discovered.

YouTube was coded almost entirely in Python - so if that encourages you to learn it... :)

 

[DanielSmith]

quite right!

but was Python a markup "language"?

 

[CRGreathouse]

but was Python a markup "language"?

I think of Python as a full-fledged programming language.

 

[jtbell]

Designing websites by hand is practically an ancient concept now -- just use an HTML editor like everyone else.

Make that almost everyone else. I write all my HTML code by hand using a plain old text editor. But I maintain only a couple of sites: my personal site, and some pages for my department. I use a simple, no-frills design that's mainly text, and keeps the amount of HTML markup to a minimum. I don't usually mess with fonts or colors. The only positional layout type stuff I regularly do is a bit of CSS to break up my main body text into two columns so I don't get long lines of text that are hard to read.

The most elaborate layout that I've ever done is probably the table on this page, with the background colors and alignment of columns. But this was a special case for me.

A lot depends on the kind of website work you do, of course. I'm my only "customer," so I can use the same basic design for everything, which makes it easy to write new pages. If you work on different sites for different people, and they all have different requirements for "look and feel," then it makes sense to use tools to automate much of it. But even in that case, I think it would be a good idea to have done a simple site or two completely by hand, just to learn enough about what's going on behind the scenes so you can tweak things by hand if necessary.

 

[-Job-]

Most sites now use content management systems anyway, so you only have to do the css and basic html once, so it's worth putting some manual labor into it to get it right.