Built my first real webpage at a coffee shop and it actually worked

Honestly, I've been messing around with HTML for like two months now, just copying tutorials and not really getting it. Last Saturday I was stuck at a Starbucks near my place in Austin because my internet went down at home. I had this idea to just build a simple page from scratch with zero help, no copy-paste. I spent about 3 hours typing out a header, a paragraph, and a link to my favorite recipe site. When I opened it in the browser and saw it render perfectly, I actually laughed out loud. It's nothing fancy, just a bare bones page with black text on white background. But for me, that moment made everything click in a way the tutorials never did. Has anyone else had a breakthrough moment outside of your normal learning setup?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryanprice11d ago

Wait, you made it through 3 hours at a Starbucks without your laptop dying or the wifi kicking you out? That alone sounds like a miracle. But yeah, I totally get that moment when it just works, it's like your brain finally connects the dots. I had a similar thing happen at a laundromat of all places, I was messing with some basic CSS trying to center a div and after like 45 minutes of frustration it finally clicked and I felt like a wizard.

seanh9110d ago

Your brain finally connects the dots" is exactly it dude. That laundromat thing sounds rough but also kinda perfect. For me the Starbucks thing worked bc I was forced to commit. No phone hotspot to cheat with, no YouTube tabs open with someone telling me what to type. Just me and a text editor and the sheer willpower to make a p tag show up where I wanted it. That kind of pressure is honestly what I needed to stop being a tutorial zombie and actually figure out how the pieces fit together. Now I'm thinking about trying the same thing but with JavaScript at a library or something where I can't just google the answer.