HTML is pretty straightforward so just understanding the very basic stuff is probably all you need. CSS is where html gets any challenge it might have.

CSS is weird because it’s very “easy” so “real developers” kind of object to learning it, but the truth is, if you gave any of them a layout design, they probably couldn’t build it. There are tools like tailwind to help, but, IMO, tailwind just helps you avoid learning css’s vocabulary, but you just replace it with having to learn tailwind’s vocabulary.

JavaScript on the other hand is a “real” programming language, though decidedly quick-n-dirtier than other languages. It lets you be a lot more sloppy. (Tbh it’s a lot more forgiving than css!). As a result, it lacks the elegance and control that “real developers” like – and, as most people’s first language, it lets newcomers get into bad habits. For these reasons, JavaScript is a bit derided – but, unlike CSS, most developers can’t avoid it.

There are a few key ideas in JavaScript that, once you understand them, things make a lot more sense. (I won’t get into them now, since it doesn’t sound like you’re at the point where that kind of clarity would help, but, when you are, come on back here and make a post!)

TLDR: HTML is definitely something you can just pick up along the way. JavaScript is a real language that will take a little while to feel comfortable with, and it will take a career to master. CSS will never be easy, so don’t let it hold you back.

Follow up question – I’m not OP but I’m another not-really-new developer (5 years professional xp) that has 0 experience working with others:

I have trouble understanding where to go on the spectrum of “light touch” and “doing a really good job”. (Tldr) How should a contributor gauge whether to make big changes to “do it right” or to do it a little hacky just to get the job done?

For example, I wanted to make a dark mode for a site i use, so i pulled the sites’s repo down and got into it.

The CSS was a mess. I’ve done dark modes for a bunch of my own projects, and I basically just assign variables (–foreground-color, --background-color), and then swap their assignments by the presence or absence of a “.dark-mode” class in the body tag.

But the site had like 30 shades of every color, like, imperceptibly different shades of red or green. My guess was the person used a color picker and just eyeballed it.

If the site was mine, I would normalize them all but there was such a range – some being more than 10-15% different from each other – so i tried to strike a balance in my normalization. I felt unsure whether this was done by someone who just doesn’t give a crap about color/CSS or if it was carefully considered color selection.

My PR wasn’t accepted (though the devs had said in discord that i could/should submit a PR for it). I don’t mind that it wasn’t accepted, but i just don’t know why. I don’t want to accidentally step on toes or to violate dev culture norms.

Copy designs you like, and keep a couple of CSS files +/- web components that you can carry along with you from project to project. Tweak then as you go.

Like everything else, getting good at making designs that you like will take time and effort, so if you want you get good at it, do it! I find it fun, and my designs aren’t to everyone’s taste (I too like black tshirts), but whatever.

Plus, getting good at making designs that i like has made me better at making designs clients/projects will like, so, win/win.

jQuery is a lot smaller and less nebulous than its competitors (looking at you,React literally every JavaScript framework).

Jquery was what was popular when i learned js. I’m kinda glad it was, honestly: jQuery is a little unique in that it doesn’t have magic to it the way js frameworks do. Everything you can do in jQuery, you can do in vanilla JavaScript pretty easily. With, say, React, how is a newcomer supposed to understand how a series of React components become HTML?

So jQuery kept it “real” for me. Fewer abstractions between me and the HTML meant it was easier for me to connect the dots as a self taught developer.

As for how it’s changed, it’s more any how vanilla JavaScript has changed. A lot of the things that made jQuery so much easier and cleaner than vanilla are now baked in, like document.querySelector(), element.classList, createElement(), addEventListener()… It had Ajax methods that, before jQuery, were a tremendous pain in the ass.

jQuery was great, but, you basically had to use it with something like PHP, because it had no back end. So when angular came out (and a few others that aren’t around anymore and I’ve forgotten), it allowed you to replace both PHP and jQuery, and developers rejoiced.

Why did they rejoice? I’m not actually sure there was reason to, objectively speaking. As developers, we like new tech, especially if that new tech requires us to think about code differently, even if, in retrospect, it’s a hard argument to make to say that, if we had just stuck with PHP and jQuery we would be somehow worse off than we are with React.

Of course, in tech, when a new system changes how we think, sometimes (not as often as we’d like) it helps us reconsider problems and find much more elegant solutions. So, would we have all the innovations we have today if all these js frameworks has never existed? Obviously we can’t really answer that – but it’s a toke of copium for when we get nostalgic for the PHP/jQuery days.

(Also, for you newer people reading this, you should probably be aware that the PHP/jQuery mini-stack is still very quietly used. You’ll definitely see it, especially in php-baaed COTS.)

arguably, that’s a good thing because it means project decisions are made uncorrupted by profit motive

Argue-er here, chiming in. This statement could be interpreted as considering only half of the central relationship of capitalism. (Capitalism isn’t just about deriving profit from the control of surplus, it’s about the relationship between surplus and scarcity. Surplus doesn’t mean shit if no one wants what you have.)

The decisions that volunteers make may not be motivated by the desire/ability to make profit, but they can be (and often are) motivated by the opposite; they have to account for the fact that their volunteer work is labor that isn’t contributing to their survival – aka, their day job. The demands placed on them by their other responsibilities will have to take precedence over the volunteer project.

In practice, this means they have to take shortcuts and/or do less than they would like to, because they don’t have time to devote to it. It’s not exactly the same end product as if it was profit-seeking, since that can tempt maintainers into using dark patterns etc, but they’re similar.

Ideally, they would have all the money they needed, didn’t have to have regular jobs, but also had families/friends/hobbies that would keep them from over-engineering ffmpeg.

To say this in a simpler/shorter way (TD;DR), their decisions can be motivated by the fact that they aren’t making money from it, don’t have enough time or resources to do everything they might want.

(Why is this so long?? I’m bored in the train, gotta kill the time somehow…why not say in 1000 words what I could have said in 100)

And I’m sure Microsoft would be happy to not have to do it anymore. And I personally would much prefer an actual typing system rather than a glorified linter.

Tho I wonder if it will end up being like jQuery, in the sense that, by the time core jQuery features got added to vanilla js, jQuery had developed new features that validated its continued existence. Maybe TS will go further than what gets absorbed into JS and keep it alive.

Imo they’ll add typing to vanilla js, which will kill ts.

This is the core issue with the traditional dead man’s “switch” – it doesn’t require death to go off, just letting go of it, and there are other reasons why that might happen. By extension, a switch that requires you to log into something periodically might be problematic if you’re predisposed. Personally I’d just set a longer timer, a month is probably fine and, unless your “exposure” is extremely time sensitive, a month won’t matter once you’re dead.

This is a good point – it didn’t have to look like spam tho, it could look like anything. Or it could look like many things. Write up a 10-20 line text file of bullshit emails from one person, or even a few people – or even have Chat Gippity write them, tho that might have a paper trail, depending on your attacker.

All you have to do is put some “flag” word in the first few words so you recognize it. Then, any reply to that inbox (which could have many aliases) resets the timer.

The big problem is, imo, if you’re “dangerous” enough to de-alive, then you’ve already exposed something big. Would you have something left to expose after that?

Look Ma, this guy says it’s ok that I’m a full stack dev. He says it’s even good!

Also: counterpoint: if you teach your kids to code, you can outsource to them.

Vim wasn’t invented, it spawned fully written and tested at the moment creation came into existence

That’s why vi is already installed on every Linux system

I started using VPNs and Tor a lot more over the last couple of years, and I had no idea how many websites are just like, “Oh, we can’t collect data on you? Then you can’t use our website.”

Jquery is just shorthand, really – unless things have changed in the last decade (which doesn’t seem likely in the world of technology! /s), jquery is basically a way to stop writing document. GetElementById() and element.classList.add() over and over.

Don’t get me wrong, that shorthand was a valuable and unique addition to a tool set – jQuery code was much easier to read and maintain than vanilla js, for sure. But I feel like now that websites usually have build steps, using jQuery involves a lot more effort than just not using it, that, with its kind of naive approach to DOM manipulation, is where the hate comes from, imo. It’s probably still a great choice in a traditional LAMP stack build.

Wtf is this bullshit. When tf did vim start allowing you to do the same thing in more than one way

Yeah, the Serenity Prayer context might help.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

You’re being downvoted because people people think you’re being obtuse, but, as a person that overuses logical thinking to a diagnosable degree, my suspicion is that you’re doing that. Also because your tone is kind of…not good.

The whole point of the Serenity Prayer (“accept the things I cannot change”) is that it includes “change the things I can” – so the things Davis is changing are things she CAN change, by definition.

But her point is that she is reframing what she believes she can and cannot change. Recategorizing, if you will.

She’s invoking the third part of the Serenity Prayer: the wisdom to know the difference. As we grow and learn, our wisdom increases, so the things that belong in the first two categories will shift.

Things that used to be things that can’t be changed are becoming things that she can.

To understand the quote, you just have to give it some space to breathe, and not be so logical about it.

it’s weird that it happened twice

Everyone who dabbles in programming eventually learns :q. Not everyone learns :wq.

That’s true, you can’t really miss what’s happening with a dark mode switch – it’s not like it’s a “charge me $50 extra for insurance on my shredded wheat” button.

The theme selector tho – while rare – IDK, that doesn’t have have text – it probably should, for the same if a11y, but you can indicate the theme with an image; the one I made for a project recently uses the image itself on the button.

The case that undermines your point is icon toggles, since they don’t need a label, but a checkbox does. For example, dark mode icon buttons: They usually show sun or moon icons, which hits OP’s point: if your in dark mode, and the button shows a moon, that would make sense – except the button doesn’t put you into dark mode, at that point it puts you into light mode, so, shouldn’t it show the sun?

I’ve been loving Source Hut, but they’re not ready to handle GitHub-level usage