HTML Tutorial

[shaqywacky]

I think we have different meaning for learning something, to me it just means that you understand it or can do it, not that you're good at it.

Like at 15 1/2 people learn how to drive, to me that means they know how to drive, not that they are good at it.

[Overlord5]

My version of learning means to understand to the point that I can write/read code fairly well.

I'm not entirely sure how to do quotes, but to the person that talked about Ubuntu... Is there anything else you would suggest. I'm more of a windows person. I have a Ubuntu live USB, which I use occasionally, and I have a Backtrack 4 USB (Which I will also dabble in soon). I have a copy of Microsoft Visual Studo, for learning C, it's just that Ubuntu relies a fair amount on console code which I'm not great at. In DOS I can issue commands, but with Unix (that's probably wrong, don't criticize. Python maybe?) I'm not too great.

[insomaniacal]

DOS and the Linux Terminal are pretty similar in concept. You type a command and it gets run. They just have different commands.

I'm not sure what you mean when you said "Python Maybe?", but you can run the python interpreter from DOS or Linux, but you can't really control the system with it without resorting to using the OS module to execute commands, which would be really useless in this situation.

Either OS should be fine, though Linux is usually hailed as the more technically inclined OS,meaning you're going to spend far more time telling the computer what to do, and far less having it tell you what to do.

[Overlord5]

Ok, here's another question. If I was creating a forum like website, what language would that be? (A secure forum)

[insomaniacal]

You could write a forum in almost any language. PHP is generally the most widely used however.

[fashizzlepop]

Don't use visual studio for learning C. C# maybe but not C or C++. Use notepad or notepad++

[Overlord5]

Alright. I'll learn PHP. Any other suggestions for forums?

Don't use visual studio for learning C. C# maybe but not C or C++. Use notepad or notepad++

Any reason to use notepad++ instead?

[fashizzlepop]

For a forum all you need is PHP. Using something like visual studio will not help you become a better programmer. Learn to type and read code in plain text first. That's why i suggested regular ol' notepad. Only notepad++ if you really need syntax highlighting. It seems you are spending more time preparing to learn then you are actually learning. Quit preparing. Just do it.

[Overlord5]

Yea. I tend to over-prepare. I like to set guidelines, so I have some goal. Thanks for all the help!

[computerbp13]

I'm sure much of this has already been said, I'm just stating my opinion:
First off, videos are way overkill. Once you grasp the concept, HTML will come second nature to you. Spend some time reading through the HTML tutorial on w3schools.org. I taught myself HTML in a little under a day just by reading W3Schools' tutorials and you can to.

Regarding an editor, IMHO you shouldn't touch anything with advanced features such as Dreamweaver, Coda, or even Notepad+. The best way to start is with a simple monospaced font text file editor (Notepad is the obvious choice). Too many people jump right in and start using editors that do half the work for them (ending tags, listing tag attributes, CSS properties) and they aren't really learning the fundamentals. By using Notepad you have to know what you're doing and it forces you to memorize tags and attributes whereas Notepad+ will provide hints that are useful to experts like myself who are extremely lazy typers (or want to save time), but can negatively affect someone trying to learn the language. I cannot stress enough how using Notepad to being with is important!

Another language. Well it's not a language (I guess it's debatable), but I would go for CSS because HTML doesn't look that good by itself and a background image along with some font tags really don't look that professional. Instead of plunging into the development work, learn some styling. CSS takes a while to learn, but as with HTML, W3Schools is your friend. Use it to learn basic syntax and must know properties such as margin, padding, color, and background. Often finding a property (or its values) is a Google search away. From there learn some basic JavaScript, but don't mess with a framework like jQuery. You should have a good comprehension of JavaScript before you start relying on a framework. These two will probably fill you plate for a while, but if you are still looking for a challenge I'd try PHP as a server side language. It's simple (and again it takes a quick Google search to find functionalities that are often built in) to code and is supported by most servers running apache. I would also argue that you look into Python too since it enforces indentation and code formatting that PHP lets you slack with.
Well that's my advice; take it or leave it, but whatever you do, have fun with your programming endeavors.