It's always been on my list of things to learn, it just always...drifted mysteriously to the bottom of the list. It was too complicated, too time consuming, too... boring.
As it turns out, coding is none of these things! Over the past few weeks, I've kind of fallen in love with coding (no, I have not gone mad). It's the perfect balance of right-brain and left-brain functionality and totally satisfies my OCD tendencies. It's a complex puzzle that magically produces interactive artwork. Crazy.
So how did I go about learning code? And for free, no less? I asked friends and colleagues the best way to learn, thinking I'd get answers like "take class XYZ at ABC and you'll be set"... not the case. Most people that learn coding teach themselves. They read tutorials online, look at code from different websites, and try to understand and recreate it. Total trial and error. Not my cup of tea. I wanted to learn code and I wanted to learn it now.
Begrudgingly, I went through tutorial after tutorial, making notes, copying code. At first it was (literally) another language; but after awhile, I noticed patterns and the designs these patterns produced. I learned how layout works on a website (hint: not at all like InDesign). I'm no Google developer, but I managed to lay (what I consider) to be a pretty solid foundation for my portfolio site (once I master Java and Flash it'll be outta site--pun intended).
So where did I find all of this coding knowledge? A bunch of places:
- To get warmed up, I highly recommend Jessica Hische's and Russ Maschmeyer's video tutorial: Don't Fear The Internet. This gives a great overall context of coding and is guaranteed to make you laugh.
- The World Wide Web Consortium is the golden standard. They literally write the rules of web coding. Their tutorials are dry, but informative.
- HTML Dog was my favorite. Both the HTML and CSS tutorials were explained in a no-nonsense, informal tone that made the concepts easy to process.
- Finally, I recommend downloading Firefox (if you don't have it already) and it's plugin, Firebug. This allows you to inspect code on any website. Once you've completed the first three tutorials, Firebug is the best tool to help demystify websites and their methods of coding.
Note: There is such a thing as bad code. Read up on the rules (make sure all tutorials are dated recently) or chances are your website won't work, or worse--fellow coders will identify you as a messy coder (gasp). I made it through Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing With Web Standards and am all the better for it (just try to ignore his smart ass sarcasm).
After completing all these steps, you can start building your own website. Speaking from experience, this is really the best way to learn code. I only understood 'containers' and 'padding' when my logo ended up in the bottom left corner of my site rather than top left. The growing pains might be frustrating at times, but it's certainly worth it. I used Dreamweaver, but there are a ton of free programs out there (some are on your computer already--Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac)).
How have you learned web coding? Are there any other good (free) tutorials out there?
c/o marketingprofs.com |
c/o don't fear the internet |
c/o don't fear the internet |