Ask HN: Where did you learn Web Development?

As someone who taught himself programming at a young age, perhaps my experiences may be helpful.

My first two "languages" were HTML and qbasic, both of which were learned loosely from books. HTML was "HTML for dummies", and basic from whatever was available at the library at the time. While HTML is not a programming language it was a way for me to type in "cryptic" text and see meaningful output, which as a youngin' was enough to give me the bug.

I say loosely learned from books because with each language I had a project in mind while learning it. I was gifted with a domain and webhost which I was determined to put to use, animated gifs, frames and all. It also provided me with something to brag about to friends, which again was enticing at a young age.

As for basic, I still distinctly remember procrastinating my real homework and studies to write simple programs that I figured would benefit me in the long run. Things like random math problems, vocabulary tests, practice history tests etc.

While this may not be directly related to web dev, it may be useful for those younger folks itching to get into programming. Try to point them in a direction of a problem in their lives that can be automated, simplified or enhanced through the learning of a language. I understand that things are a bit different today but if someone truly wants to learn I think that may be a good road to travel down.

I started writing for the web shortly after it was invented less than a year for sure I learned to develop by hitting gopher (kind of like the web) documents. It was pretty easy back then. It was just pages, then CGI was added and I started doing CGI/C perl became popular for it and I taught myself Perl. Then the frameworks came out ASP, JSP, ColdFusion etc. So for me it has been an evolution as the industry has evolved. Being in it from the beginning I must say I have very happy to see the web finally morphing from page base to application to a more application centric development model with JavaScript applications. It is what the web should have been a long time ago. But there was a period where people became client phobic due to Microsoft's grip on the client. It stymied the industry by a few years for sure.

I they think that Web Development is boring, i would say them: "quit, now, and never try again.", Developing, anything, it's not boring, it's thinking, working, studying, you always learn something, you can always make better.

Developing isn't "fun", but it's great to build something on your own and see you product to evolve.

As i said, you never stop learing if you are a hacker and not just a programmer that can only make those couple things he was teached, so there is only one way to learn:

Find something you like,

Check how it's done,

Try do it yourself, try to UNDERSTAND what a code does.(you do not really understand something untill you think it's obvious)

Make it better.

Repeat.

If you are not passionate about what you do you will always find it boring.

First day I opened a web browser was IE6 back in 1998 and the first site was Google. Somebody explained to me that I can find whatever I wanted using Google. Voila! But at that very moment I had only one question to ask - "How this(Google) website was made ?"

I learnt, when I began searching for how to develop websites.

When people ask about web development give them keywords to begin with and hint them to search unless you are being paid to teach them.

Edit: phrases