How difficult is it to learn Web Development?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the difficulty of learning web development, specifically focusing on HTML5, coding practices, and the use of web development tools. Participants share their experiences and perspectives on the learning curve associated with web development and the tools involved.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant expresses interest in learning HTML5 and gaining experience with the Adobe Suite for potential job opportunities in web development.
  • Another participant suggests that the ease of learning HTML depends on prior programming knowledge, emphasizing that web development requires creativity beyond just mastering tools.
  • A participant shares their limited experience with web design tools like Dreamweaver, noting the challenges of mixing generated HTML with manual code modifications.
  • There is a question about whether to learn HTML5 or HTML4 first, with some uncertainty expressed about the current status of HTML5.
  • A participant mentions using VB.NET to generate HTML for large websites, highlighting the complexity of maintaining extensive web content.
  • Participants discuss the implications of using different tools for web development, with concerns about the complications that can arise from using software like Dreamweaver compared to writing pure HTML.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on the best approach to learning HTML or the effectiveness of various tools. There are differing opinions on the complexity of HTML and the best practices for web development.

Contextual Notes

Some participants express uncertainty about the current state of HTML5 and its adoption, as well as the challenges of maintaining large websites, which may depend on individual experience and specific project requirements.

Who May Find This Useful

Individuals interested in starting a career in web development, particularly those considering learning HTML and exploring different web development tools.

ArthurRead
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I'm going to be in school for a while and I need some source of income. My friend has a friend who finds jobs for him that have to do with web development. He says that I could do the same if I just learned HTML5 and gain some experience with the Adobe Suite. How hard is to learn these?
 
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Depends on your aptitude for that sort of thing. If you already know a couple of programming languages it should be a breeze (HTML is not actually a "programming language", it's a "script", or more formally a "markup language" but that somewhat irrelevant)

Building a good website is not so much about learning to use the tools (that's the easy part) it's about organizing and displaying the site in a way that is helpful to your customer and even more, to HIS customer so that it draws business.

The tools are just mechanics. Site creation takes a lot more creativity than just learning the tools.
 
Thanks for your reply. I don't think I will be "designing" that much. My friend said that he mostly codes and debugs. I took a web design elective in high school and got my feet wet in Dreamweaver cs5. We dealt very little with the actual html code behind it though.
 
ArthurRead said:
Thanks for your reply. I don't think I will be "designing" that much. My friend said that he mostly codes and debugs. I took a web design elective in high school and got my feet wet in Dreamweaver cs5. We dealt very little with the actual html code behind it though.

HTML code is pretty simple stuff. What's NOT simple is mixing pure HTML code with the crap normally produced by tools such as Dreamweaver. Now don't get me wrong. Dreamweaver and similar tools do a GREAT job of creating web sites, but they do so by creating HTML that is WAY more complicated than it needs to be and what I'm compaining about is that if you modify the underlying HTML, the tool may not like your changes and it will really screw up the pages. I don't know this to be true of Dreamweaver, which I have not used. My comments are based on Microsoft's FrontPage and it's possible that more modern tools don't have that problem.
 
That makes sense. My friend said he just uses notepad, which I guess, means pure HTML code. So I should learn HTML5, or learn HTML4 first? I think html5 is a work in progress but my friend told me that everyone is using it these days.
 
ArthurRead said:
That makes sense. My friend said he just uses notepad, which I guess, means pure HTML code. So I should learn HTML5, or learn HTML4 first? I think html5 is a work in progress but my friend told me that everyone is using it these days.

I have not kept up with the advances in HTML so can't advise you. I use simple stuff that has been around pretty much since the beginning of the WWW and I write VB.NET to create most of my pages in HTML because they are WAY too big to deal with by hand. They are NOT graphically elaborate, just functional.

Here are a couple of examples:

www.phinds.com/bowls

www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics

If you view the page source, you'll see it's very simple.
 
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Mhmm. What do you use VB.NET for? I took an elective called Visual Basic, in which, we created simple programs like a calculator for example. How does this connect to html and web development?
 
ArthurRead said:
Mhmm. What do you use VB.NET for? I took an elective called Visual Basic, in which, we created simple programs like a calculator for example. How does this connect to html and web development?

The largest of my sites has 70,000+ files on it and is updated frequently. Do you have any concept of what it would take to MANUALLY create and maintain (constantly upgrade) a website with that many files? I don't think one person could do it much less do it as a fairly minor part-time effort.
 
So the html code in the page source was generated by VB.NET?
 
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ArthurRead said:
So the html code in the page source was generated by VB.NET?

Yes, all of it. The comments on each page were all I had to type, and you can have spelling errors in those.
 
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Interesting. Thanks for all the info. I think I might try this.
 

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