Is one of your goals to learn to code, or to teach yourself HMTL and CSS programming? If so, you’re in luck because that’s the topic of today’s video and article.
Before we dive into the specifics of learning to program for the web, let’s address the most important ingredient for teaching yourself to do anything: your mindset.
I love the book by Carol Dweck called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
, where she outlines that there are two types of people in the world. Those who believe they can learn and grow (growth mindset), and those feel like they’re “done” and can’t acquire new skills.
In order to learn to code, whether it’s HTML, CSS, PHP, or any other web language out there, you need to have that growth mindset.
Learn To Code – Teach Yourself HTML and CSS
Learn To Code By Looking Under The Hood Of Other Websites
When I was first starting to code websites back when I was 12 years old, there weren’t a ton of how-to resources like there are today.
Luckily, I had a friend of a friend who taught me how to look under the hood of other websites at the code they were using.
Being able to reverse engineer how someone created something is awesome.
It’s allowed me to teach myself HTML and CSS, and today you can take a look at how other people code and then research to learn what the code means.
Oftentimes, we don’t know what we should Google, but when you take a peek at existing code you get key words to type into the search engines, which will shortcut your learning curve like crazy!
Firefox debugger: If you use the Firefox browser, then this tutorial will show you how to turn it on. You can take a peek at the code of any website. I also used this one extensively when debugging more advanced code, where code gets generated on the fly, and you can walk through the site as you click things, using jQuery or Javacript.
Chrome Developer Tools: If you don’t use Firefox, then I recommend Chrome and their developer tools. Very similarly, you can click on elements on a website and find out what code was used to make it happen! Curiosity, sated.
Teach Yourself HTML & CSS With These Tutorial Websites
Codecademy: This is a great site with tutorials on a number of different web programming languages, and it’s easy to get started!
Girl Develop It: This is more of a local classes directory for girls who want to learn how to code. I love the idea of learning to code in person with a teacher on hand, since sometimes you just need someone looking over your shoulder while you’re trying to figure stuff out.
Code School: This resource isn’t free but it does offer a ton of in-depth know-how that’s useful for web development and even app development on Apple devices, too.
Are You Learning To Code?
If you’re taking the learn to code challenge, leave a comment below and let me know what resources you’ve used that have rocked your world for teaching yourself HTML, CSS, and other programming languages.
