Coding in HTML

Throughout the late 1990s
and into the early 2000s,
knowing how to code in HTML
would become an important tool
for any website developer to have
within each programmer's skill set. 

During the dawn of the internet,
a working knowledge of HTML
would allow webmasters to build
and to customize their websites.

My knowledge of HTML
grew from what was
first provided to me
from my father-in-law,
who had been
an avid computer-coding enthusiast. 

 
As he coded,
I would watch - and learn.

But let's go back in time
before HTML 
and before the internet.

Starting in the early 1980s,
my father-in-law
and his fellow
computer enthusiast friends
would gather together,
to code.

They would bring to their meetings,
some of the first desktop
personal computers
that were ever invented.

During that same time,
and 53 miles to the east,
across Cleveland town,
my parents had purchased for me
a Commodore 64 computer
in the year 1982.

  
I opened the box. 
I hooked the unit up to a television.

Reading the manual,
and typing commands,
I began coding in BASIC.

Meanwhile, 53 miles west across town
and on the other side of Cleveland
my future father-in-law
sat at his first personal computer.

We would not meet until the year 1994.

My father-in-law and his friends
would prefer to write their bits of code
on the Radio Shack brand of personal desktop computers.  During that era, my father-in-law  and his friends would name their (Tandy/Radio Shack) TRS-80 Color Computer user group:

"The Co Co Nuts"

As in:   CO lor  CO mputer  NUTS.

Do you get it?  The computer user group's name is a play on words.   Let me explain more about that....

During that era, a highly promoted breakfast cereal could be found on the shelves of nearly every grocery store in America.

The cereal had a similar name, and it was made popular with an ongoing ad campaign that aired on TV.

The made-for-television spot featured a cartoon bird who would remark: 

"I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!"

Admittedly, some of these jokes are funnier untranslated.  Perhaps, you had to be there.

Perhaps you had to grow-up in that era  to truly understand the humor of the CoCo Nuts Computer Group and the Cocoa Puffs bird, and all of that. 

Anyhow.   During the 1980s, the CoCo Nuts would experiment with coding.   They would delve into all sorts of programming languages and machine code, too.

In year 2021, things have changed.

In my opinion, recently,
there has been  a general dumbing-down
of the webmaster.

These days, compiler programs
write the code for you.  

It is debatable how much machine code
or how much HTML one must know
in order to create a basic website in year 2021.

Granted, someone must still code the compiler program but that person was probably a bonified computer science major and not a sales and marketing major!

By and large, the majority of the machine code of this website has been generated by a compiler, of sorts. It has been provided in the cloud by Google.

The pages on this site are now built with a simple drag & drop interface, just as most websites are these days. 

Nevertheless, I do code in HTML.   I'm self-taught.  Now, the need to write code in HTML seems to be a bit of a novelty anymore!

Will knowing how to code in HTML be a useful skill
to have in your skill set in the next decade or two?

I just don't know!

This is all debatable.

Let's discuss how much programming you may need (or may not need) in an interview.

In my mind, anyone can create a fairly basic website now, for any purpose,
or for any group
without much coding involved whatsoever. 

At the present time, webpages are created in year 2021 and often very little thought is given to all the raw code that makes the webpage appear on the computer screen.

Yet here's the icing on the cake:

Now,  when you hit the "Publish" button
the site that is created becomes optimized
for use not just on personal computers
but also, the site becomes optimized for
mobile devices too. 

In other words, both types of sites
become "ready for primetime"
with the click of a button. 

It wasn't always this way.

Thinking back,
as smartphones began to grow in popularity,
I would absolutely "stew"
about my ecommerce site's ability
to function well on all of these
new mobile devices.

After year 2007, it became clear to me
that the ecommerce site
that I had put together
did NOT work well on mobile.

For that matter, I had built an
entire ecommerce platform
complete with a bazillion product pages
and most of it
was NOT optimized for mobile.

Now, all of a sudden
after 2007
the prospective customer
began accessing
websites differently. 

After 2007, the prospective customer began 
surfing in to access their favorite
ecommerce sites
on a smartphone!

On topic of coding the site,
for the webmasters
and for those who build websites
all of this technology
that alleviates most of the coding is new.

 
It was invented within the past decade
or two.

I know, because  I have lived through it: 
the before and after.

I saw the changes happen
as they were taking place.

The world went from
no cell phones,
to giant phones in the car
with the fixed-antenna
glued to the
rear window glass
of each automobile,
to flip phones,
and now to smartphones.

Similarly, the world
went from writing the code
to using a drag-and-drop interface.
 

 Remarkable!