What I Learned by Relearning HTML

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2021-05-26 19:30:06

I’ve worked on websites for several years, both professionally and for side projects. One day, I reflected on the fact that all of my web development education had come from actually making websites. In most cases, I’d have a specific problem, Google how to solve it, and learn something new in the process.

I wondered what I was missing by never learning HTML in a comprehensive way. Forget CSS and JavaScript. I’m just talking about raw HTML. It might seem silly to go back to such a basic aspect of web development after a decent amount of experience, but it’s easy to become overconfident with a skill just because you know enough to do a few useful things.

For context, I made my first website in middle school for a class project. We learned basic HTML, and embedding a MP3 song felt like magic. But I didn’t touch web development again until college. I made a lightweight news aggregator called The Daily Lore that’s still running (I preserved the original version).

Since then, I’ve worked on two websites professionally, one website for a nonprofit, this personal website, and a few small websites for side projects, such as Make a README.