[wplug] about basic programming

Michael Smith michael at smith-li.com
Fri Mar 4 20:25:23 EST 2005


On Mar 4, 2005, at 10:24 AM, J Aaron Farr wrote:
> HTML is a publishing language not really a programming language.  It's
> good to learn, but it involves different skills than programming.  
> Also,
> learning HTML is easy.  So don't worry about it yet.

I beg to differ. Learning HTML is *impossible*. Programming is much 
easier. At least gcc, Borland, and MS compilers respond in a traceably 
similar fashion to the same code. The same cannot be said about firefox 
and IE.

But your point is well taken ;-)

> <snip>

> If you
> start off always using fancy tools, you'll miss some of the basics and 
> it
> can make things difficult when the fancy tools break.

And they will, too. I'm seriously considering moving from Dreamweaver 
to Textpad and Subversion at work. I think I'll lose less work that 
way.

> So, I suggest a progression of learning something like:
>
> C --> Java/Python/Ruby --> Perl/Shell Scripting --> HTML + Javascript

I would tweak this to move XHTML/CSS/Javascript perhaps before the 
Perl, because to a web developer, half the time you're using the 
scripting language to create and organize the HTML.

Peace,
Michael A. Smith


Thanks,
Michael A. Smith



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