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I've been struggling with this concept in the context of teaching someone web development. There's just so much you "have" to know and it all seems so interrela

I've been struggling with this concept in the context of teaching someone web development. There's just so much you "have" to know and it all seems so interrelated. Do you start with HTTP since that drives the web? If you do, do you first need to cover computer networking, IP addresses, routing? HTML and CSS aren't terrible to get started with, but are ultimately limited and [generally] aren't enough to build "some cool app". Then you have the beastly JavaScript, which you'll probably use on your front-end but only might use on your backend - there are so many other options. Python and Django? Ruby and Rails? Any of the dozens of PHP frameworks? Oh, right, now we might need to get into SQL. And builds and deployments and sysadmin-y tasks. Don't forget security. Or we could build everything serverless or on some PaaS, but how much understanding do you really have of what's going on there. Having gone through undergrad and grad school for CS, I think part of it comes not truly realizing or accepting just how much knowledge you get from taking ~45 college courses . It's taken years for me to learn a reasonable breadth and depth of this subset of computer science, (and there's way more I don't know than I do know) and I struggle with the fact that I seem unable to boil all of that into the "a-b-a-b" pattern the author describes. Start doing the thing you want to be doing (e.g, making a web app), and learn just enough of the bits you need to keep on that path. But it's much easier said that done when you're starting from scratch. It's like the pervasive interview question of "What happens when you type google.com in your browser and hit enter?"[0] Well, a lot... where do you start? [0] https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when

laszlokorte 8y ago
I taught web development to multiple people, some of them now working as web developer. I still teach it almost exactly like I have been taught about 15 years ago my self. In my opinion it works great: 1. using a simple text editor learn writing some basic (semantic) HTML and view in in the browser. At this point you do not think to much about all the fancy websites out there but just see it as an geeky alternative to a word processor (headlins, paragraphs, lists, images[and their path resolution]... no input fields yet) and get familiar with the notion that the computer can understand the plain text you write and display it as a formatted document. 2. introduce css as a way of adding visual effects to your elements. Start with font-size, color, backgrounds. Start with simple element selectors, then add class selectors. Contrast selectors vs inline styles. The learning person will have a lot of own creative ideas and will ask "how to do this and that?". Gradually only introduce additional selectors and properties if needed. Once you get into css3 territory tell a bit about the history of web browsers and how difference browsers support different properties. 3. introduce vanilla javascript. After the basic control flow concepts (variable, functions, if/else) are clear start with simple event handlers for button clicks. One step at a time disclose useful DOM apis (el.style, el.classList, el.querySelector) Notice how up to this point no knowledge of network protocols is needed. Except the interactivity provided javascript everything could as well be done in photoshop/word/illustrator. So learning all this is no different then learning using any other application, just a bit more geeky. The adventage of doing it that way is that you can introduce each new topic with the actually motivation for which the technology had been invented. 4. Once there is a solid understanding of html/css/js I would introduce the concept of a web server (constrasting it with the local file system) by just taking it as given that you can upload files via ftp/ssh into a folder on another computer that is linked to a domain (for now it does not matter how dns,ftp/ssh,apache/nginx... work. --- I spend much time listening to lectures (on youtube and even live in university) about topics I already know about. I enjoy how different people explain things in a different way. And I have much fun explaining things I am interested in to try how fast other people grasp the concepts. On importent impression I got is, that's sooo much easier to understand - as well as to explain - concepts in the order and context in which they were historically developed. This got especially clear to me after taking various courses on set theory, logic, computability and turing machines provided by the philosophy department after I already finished a bachelor in computer science. The philosophers focused on "How did turing come with his ideas in the context of his time" while in the CS courses that question is almost skipped.
Waterluvian 8y ago
Just go learn whatever it is you immediately need to progress on whatever project you've picked. In time you'll have enough puzzle pieces filled in that you can stand back and get a sense of what the domain looks like. Then you can start targeting what you want to know more about and in time you'll feel like an expert.

laszlokorte 8y ago

I taught web development to multiple people, some of them now working as web developer. I still teach it almost exactly like I have been taught about 15 years ago my self. In my opinion it works great: 1. using a simple text editor learn writing some basic (semantic) HTML and view in in the browser. At this point you do not think to much about all the fancy websites out there but just see it as an geeky alternative to a word processor (headlins, paragraphs, lists, images[and their path resolution]... no input fields yet) and get familiar with the notion that the computer can understand the plain text you write and display it as a formatted document. 2. introduce css as a way of adding visual effects to your elements. Start with font-size, color, backgrounds. Start with simple element selectors, then add class selectors. Contrast selectors vs inline styles. The learning person will have a lot of own creative ideas and will ask "how to do this and that?". Gradually only introduce additional selectors and properties if needed. Once you get into css3 territory tell a bit about the history of web browsers and how difference browsers support different properties. 3. introduce vanilla javascript. After the basic control flow concepts (variable, functions, if/else) are clear start with simple event handlers for button clicks. One step at a time disclose useful DOM apis (el.style, el.classList, el.querySelector) Notice how up to this point no knowledge of network protocols is needed. Except the interactivity provided javascript everything could as well be done in photoshop/word/illustrator. So learning all this is no different then learning using any other application, just a bit more geeky. The adventage of doing it that way is that you can introduce each new topic with the actually motivation for which the technology had been invented. 4. Once there is a solid understanding of html/css/js I would introduce the concept of a web server (constrasting it with the local file system) by just taking it as given that you can upload files via ftp/ssh into a folder on another computer that is linked to a domain (for now it does not matter how dns,ftp/ssh,apache/nginx... work. --- I spend much time listening to lectures (on youtube and even live in university) about topics I already know about. I enjoy how different people explain things in a different way. And I have much fun explaining things I am interested in to try how fast other people grasp the concepts. On importent impression I got is, that's sooo much easier to understand - as well as to explain - concepts in the order and context in which they were historically developed. This got especially clear to me after taking various courses on set theory, logic, computability and turing machines provided by the philosophy department after I already finished a bachelor in computer science. The philosophers focused on "How did turing come with his ideas in the context of his time" while in the CS courses that question is almost skipped.

Waterluvian 8y ago

Just go learn whatever it is you immediately need to progress on whatever project you've picked. In time you'll have enough puzzle pieces filled in that you can stand back and get a sense of what the domain looks like. Then you can start targeting what you want to know more about and in time you'll feel like an expert.