There's Just So Much To Learn!

I was talking with a young lady recently who ran through a quick skills inventory and went on to tick through the various techniques and technologies she wanted to learn next when she stopped saying, "There's just sooo much to learn!"

She was right, of course. There is a lot to learn. And very often, somewhere along the line, some well-meaning soul helps us out by inventing some way around a lot of the knowledge—but then we have to learn how that works and so, net-net, it's probably a wash. Learn the language, or learn the program so you don't have to learn the language? Sadly, the answer is probably "both". Learn HTML and CSS? Or learn Dreamweaver? "Yes!"

Putting together a single web page might involve knowledge of HTML, XHTML, CSS, Dreamweaver, PHP, MySQL, Photoshop, Flash, Java, JavaScript, Apache, Linux, Windows, OSX, FTP, AJAX, Accessibility, Security, Templates, Forms and, of course, Design. I don't mean to scare anyone, but the list doesn't really even end there. There are any number of editors and helper applications, plus whatever rules and customs you must follow in your college or department. There is a lot to know. But you don't have to know it all quickly and in fact you probably don't have to know it all.

Most of us will quickly settle into a comfortable rhythm of making quick HTML edits and resizing images in Photoshop. But I have always felt that there is no wasted knowledge. If you spend only five minutes a week actively learning something—anything—about putting together better web pages, you will be rewarded. You will either start making a bag of money, or you will be spending less time doing the web pages and have more time to do everything else in your job, which still leads back to that bag of money.

Learning more about HTML (and XHTML) makes your page editing easier and faster and more precise. Learning how to lighten or darken photos will get you raves from the front office and from whoever is actually in the photos. And learning more about the features and functions of Dreamweaver makes your time spent in that application much more productive, as well.

There is a lot to learn. But that doesn't mean that you have to learn it all by the weekend. Suppose there are just fifty tags in all of HTML. If you set about learning them all, one per week, you would know all of the HTML tags in about a year. Now here's a little secret: I have been working on web pages since 1993, and there are HTML tags that I have never used. I know what they are and I sort of know what they do, but they have just never come up. There are going to be things like that in every area you set out to conquer. Very often you can tell early in the process what is going to be important and what isn't. Don't let it all intimidate you.

How can you learn it all? Putting aside the question of whether that is possible, or even a Good Idea, we each learn best differently. Some of us are visually oriented and we learn best by seeing things. Others are aligned more toward audio and we have to hear it to get it into our brains. Some of us are wired more for experience and we have to do things to learn them. Find your own best way and dig in. There are any number of books and Web sites that can help you learn HTML and CSS. We offer workshops and full-on training for people who need that. You can find friends and coworkers at the Web Developers' Network meetings you can ask for help. And don't be afraid to experiment. Create an unlinked page, "bogus.html" and just work your way down the various menu options. When you're done, just delete the page and keep the knowledge.

There is a lot to learn. You don't have to learn it all, and you don't have to learn it all right now. But you do have to make a start, and from there, if you are consistent, you can learn a lot.