

Things I wish I knew before I started making websites - nickpettit
http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/things-i-wish-i-knew-before-i-started-making-websites

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fishtoaster
> Programming is also a skill, but it’s not at all intuitive or tangible.
> Without guided learning, it’s impossible to even get started.

I have to disagree. Especially with web programming, it's surprisingly easy to
get started. I know plenty of people who started out by just copying and
pasting bits of html they found through 'view source'. Even when I had a basic
grasp of html (through the "guided" learning of a 5-page tutorial), my first
javascript was trying to change a counter on a snippet I'd copied from
somewhere else on the web.

I realize that "you need a mentor" is a profitable piece of advice for a site
that sells web development tutoring, but it's blatantly incorrect.

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jmduke
The followup question, of course, is: how did those people discover 'view
source'?

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fishtoaster
How did any of us discover it? Presumably they saw an interesting button and
clicked on it. That's how I first discovered that pages had source like that.

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a3voices
> Programming is also a skill, but it’s not at all intuitive or tangible.
> Without guided learning, it’s impossible to even get started.

That's total b.s. I taught myself programming in middle school by reading
books.

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lytol
I think he would consider books as "guided learning."

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nickpettit
Correct. Programming is not intuitive, so you need something (like books) to
help you. I suppose you could learn by pure trial and error, but that's really
only helpful after you've picked up a lot of the basic syntax.

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lotsofcows
I learnt to program by typing ? at a BBC BASIC prompt. Later on I found some
manuals and after that magazines started appearing. Intuition is just
experiences you haven't thought through yet. Not that I'm recommending this
approach, it takes an unnecessary amount of time to build sufficient
experience by trial and error.

