Once upon a time, I thought it would be good to learn HTML and how to create a web page. What does a computer specialist-turned-homemaker, who has been out of the job market for 25 years, do when she begins to think about earning money again? What field has changed more in the past quarter century than computing? My knowledge of punched cards, JCL, and PDP-12 assembly language might qualify me as a docent in a History of Computing exhibit of the Smithsonian Institution, but no more. But web pages, now, and HTML: that would be fun to learn, and certainly there's a market for that. Or maybe not.
Well, it was fun, but my priorities shifted when I realized that my efforts would do nothing to increase my marketability. Too many recent college graduates would know far more in that area than I could ever (or would ever want to) learn. Before I could recover from that realization, it became all to clear that there were even more hot-shot programmers in Bangalore, India who would do more and charge less than I could. So much for all my web page ideas....
It's a few years later, and all has changed again! It's not just HTML I have to learn, but SHTML and CSS and Javascript and PHP and MYSQL and who knows what other acronyms. But this time, I don't care. What I want to to is make a personal webpage, and all I care about is learning enough to do that. I wade through a two inch thick HTML book, hopelessly outdated, but a place to start. I start playing, and asking questions. With every new addition to my page, I learn something new. It is really, really fun.
And then I discover blogging. What writer can resist the chance to present his ideas where the whole world can see them? My webpages become somewhat neglected as I explore this new venue.
I know that there are standardized blogging formats that allow one to publish without much knowledge of computing, and webpage design programs that stand between the designer and the actual code. That would make my pages would look better, and do more, but where's the fun? I have to know, at least on some level, what I'm doing. I couldn't have redesigned the format of my blog if I hadn't had the HTML and CSS experience of designing my webpages.
Nor could I have navigated these strange new seas without the help of Jon Daley, Andy Flowers, and David July, my primary guides, and Salem's Attic, which provides the ship in which I sail.
This is my kind of learning: a few reference books, some human beings available for questioning, other people's work to study and copy, a useful project to work on, and the opportunity to experiment and play and test my new knowledge in a non-hurried, non-threatening situation.
