Learning a new skill
In a previous post I mentioned that one of my goals for 2026 was to finally learn web development. I had always been interested in it. As someone who more or less "grew up" on the web, I've always been fascinated by how websites worked. I remember always pressing CTRL + U to look at the source code and wonder how it all came together.
I figure it'd be nice to learn a new skill. It may come in handy.
So the past month or so I've been doing just that. I watched a few tutorials on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and have been making small, simple projects. Things like a calculator or basic calendar, for example.
And it's been a lot of fun. I really enjoy learning about all these technologies. I also really enjoy looking at others' projects. Web development is such a wide field that there's something interesting for everyone. I'm particularly interested in static websites. So I'm researching technologies like Jekyll and Hugo.
It does get kind of maddening, however. Because it's such a wide-open field, there's so many technologies, frameworks, languages, and design patterns and philosophies in use. There's so much to sift through. I sometimes feel that I'm missing out on an important knowledge base whenever I encounter something new.
In any case, something that I really enjoy about web development, at this stage at least, is that it has a lot of instantaneous feedback. I have my code editor on the left and the project on the right. I make a change on the left and it updates on the right. Back and forth back and forth. Small changes, big changes, it doesn't matter. I can change font-sizes and instantly see if I like it or not. It's really nice to see changes in real-time.
It provides a sort of positive-feedback loop. Even if frustrating moments happen (and boy do they happen a lot), I can still revert back to a working page and take a crack at it later.
This reminded me of when I first got into programming. I always loved games and figured I'd want to learn how one is made. So I downloaded GameMaker: Studio and went to work. I didn't make anything impressive, but I'll always remember those first few hours.
I got a little anime character sprite and put in some code so when I pressed the right arrow key, the character would move right on screen. When this happened, it was magical.
Here was something I made. Here was something that only took a few lines of code and yet held a (positive) Pandora's box of possibilities. So then I put in code to make the character move left when I pressed the left arrow key. I put in code for up and down. I added in code so that the character looked at the mouse when moving it around the screen. I made the character actually animate. I added in a ground and gravity. I made the character jump.
I thought that was so cool.
So when I'm now working on a project, I'm reminded of that childhood memory.