The Stuff of Nightmares

Although my first BSc degree was in Computer Science, this was back in the dinosaur days of DOS. When you turned on your mahoosive computer, you were faced with a black screen and a blinking cursor waiting for you to enter command prompts - by typing in every single character; no such thing as a mouse. Ah, the joys. I’d be the first to admit that I basically got through that degree course on a wing and a prayer, as I was not a naturally gifted programmer and I have not programmed since.

Fast-forward 30 years to our assignment from last year to build a website. A one day on-campus workshop giving a crash course in basic HTML and CSS skills did nothing to assuage my trepidation. Use Dreamweaver, they said; it’ll be easy, they said. They were wrong. It was like asking a hobby mechanic to build a rocket ship. While I understood the basics, and was able to use the default templates to start the initial website idea – build the wire model, so to speak; none of the inbuilt features achieved what I was looking for - complete the entire structure.

After asking various friends and colleagues for advice, the overall assessment was “Learn HTML and CSS and you’ll be grand.” Be grand. That wonderful Irish phrase of optimism that has led many an unsuspecting adventurer down a path of folly. And so, that is how I ended up teaching myself HTML and CSS from scratch with the aid of the invaluable resources of W3 Schools. An absolute godsend for such endeavours especially with my ‘digital immigrant’ brain that also needed reprogramming. 

Image source

While W3 Schools didn’t have the answer to every feature that I was trying to include in the website, the lessons and tutorials provided enough structure and guidance for me to persevere with figuring out the correct code.  Through trial and error, tears and tantrums, I eventually managed. So much so, I was even able to incorporate JavaScript into some of the pages – that made me feel like a ‘proper’ programmer. 

As difficult and all as I found it, the skills that I learned on that Dreamweaver assignment have stood to me, to this day, as I can now ‘read’ the HTML of any webpage to find exactly what I’m looking for if I want to copy a particular feature. However, it also served to reinforce my long-held belief – play to your strengths, not your weaknesses. So much so, that I was under no illusion that I could tackle another such assignment again. Hence, why I’ve chosen the dissertation route for my final year project – at least words on the screen, stay on the screen. In theory, anyway.  

Addendum: Ironically, while writing this entry, I came across the following blog which would have helped me a lot during that assignment. If I had only known then, what I know now...
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           "There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works." ~ Alan J. Perlis