I’d say that learning things the hard way before you learn the easy way is a phrase that applies pretty well to these past few weeks of learning HTML and CSS for our shotgun web development modules. Back in the days, websites were created with pure HTML and CSS, which sounds very backwards and inefficient when you consider the amount of tools that we have at our disposal today. Once you start using a good framework for your webpages, you’ll start to tap into a whole new world of easier manipulation of your webpages, and make them look really nice in the process. The boring, ancient looking websites from the 90s and 2000s can be re-created with these frameworks to get an entirely new look to them, and make them look like something from the modern tastes. Despite this, I’d say it was really beneficial to learn the raw, basic content of HTML and CSS. It allowed me to learn some fundamentals of how both HTML and CSS worked, and doing a few exercises creating a website with just HTML and CSS allowed me to get comfortable with the syntax/environment before incorporating Semantic UI. I’d say that learning raw HTML/CSS before using a framework to improve your websites can be compared to learning how to change a tire, and getting an upgrade in the tools you use. Initially, you start off with the hand tool in your car, and are expected to take the lug nuts of the tire off with just that. Although it may seem like a boring task, you learn that there’s some things that stay the same regardless of the tools you are using. For example, you need to raise the car with a jack and use jack stands to hold it up, loosen the nuts a tiny bit before raising up the car, and tightning the bolts in a crossed fasion, as opposed to tightening them adjacently. Then, when you incorporate something like an Impact Driver (Semantic UI), you start getting really good at taking off tires, but the initial/fundamental steps still apply. Keeping this in mind has really helped me with the learning process when it came to Semantic UI, as it helped me understand that I can’t just brain dump the concepts, structure, and syntax of HTML and CSS just because I learned soemthing new. It’s just something that allows me to make much more, while also allowing me to keep things as easy as possible.
The learning curve for Semantic UI was pretty rough to begin with. Semantic UI prides itself on using plain english to implement the various CSS classes for the sake of simplicity, but the initial learning process felt like it was far from simple. However, as I went through the modules, and finished a few practiced WODs, I started getting a little more comfortable with Semantic, and ultimately, felt like my work was getting faster and faster. It almost feels like learning Vim for the firs time again (sorry Emacs users!) where the initial learning curve was absolutly dreadful, but got exponentially better as you took advantage of the features of it, and eventually move on to become a serious power user. Unfortunately, I haven’t gone to the point where I would call myself a power user, but I feel like I can call myself somewhat competent on the lowest level, and possess enough knowledge (which translates to just reading the documentation) to make an okay-ish looking website.