All my friends built customized MySpace pages back in the day, but none of them are coders now. It gave you just enough tools to make a really interesting profile, but you would quickly hit a ceiling. During the same period, I was learning HTML using Dreamweaver and Arachnophilia (a combination of WYSIWYG and IDE). So I disagree w/the premise, even if there may have been some people that kept going, I doubt that it was a large contributor to the devs we have today because if you want to start coding you will probably start with something that gives you more flexibility.
Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
31–40 of 61 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
#32Not a site, but it may be worth a mention anyway. Minecraft has done an incredible job getting the younger generation into coding. Creating your own server starts off fairly straightforward, but gets very technical very quickly if you allow it to. From dealing with and editing all the files needed, setting up databases needed by some plugins, setting up websites, communities and shops for your server, all the way to…
I wonder if this will result in a demographic shift. I would hypothesize, though I have no immediate data to back it up, that the set of those who play Minecraft isn't the same as the set of those who use social media. While plenty would be in both, I doubt the overall demographics are the same.
I also suspect the level of technicality scaling and the type of scaling is different as well, with minecraft server hosting having a higher barrier of entry and scaling more complex faster than customizing a social media site with html/css.
Thus my guess is that while Minecraft will lead to an increase in people building deeper technical skills more focused on server administration, there will be a larger loss of those who are buildings more artistic skills with just enough technical ability to design their artistic vision in html/css.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
#33[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
#34Older Gen Z and developer here, I don't think there was something to GeoCities or MySpace growing up, but I came up with other things that personally got me and my friends a bit into development:
Maybe the most popular was developing our own Discord bots, that got me first to backend with Python and JS (I think I even learned JS before HTML and CSS...).
Growing up we mostly learned programming in school (mostly C#, yet some friends of mine learned Mobile development in Java with Firebase in high school) it was homework mostly, nothing really came out of it.
I can say that gaming got us to learn a bit of networking, trying to host our own Minecraft and Maple Story servers cause we didn't have money to rent them.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
#35Not a site, but it may be worth a mention anyway. Minecraft has done an incredible job getting the younger generation into coding. Creating your own server starts off fairly straightforward, but gets very technical very quickly if you allow it to. From dealing with and editing all the files needed, setting up databases needed by some plugins, setting up websites, communities and shops for your server, all the way to…
my programming career started when my friend convinced me to help him build a minimal redstone calculator
Re: Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
#36Are there any GenZ people on here that can provide some illumination? How'd you get into coding?
Re: Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
#37Having a lay-accessible domain that rewards tinkering and provides a path into a related professional domain is to a large extent an artifact of an immature technology. That was a confluence of factors at a place in time, not a natural link between youth and coding. The web is more mature now for better and for worse. Professionally made commercial platforms are plentiful and varied and likely to meet most users need…
> Having a lay-accessible domain that rewards tinkering and provides a path into a related professional domain is to a large extent an artifact of an immature technology.
I agree with this. I wonder what fields are lay-accessible these days. Are the opportunities now in video productions?
Re: Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
#38JSFiddle
.Net Fiddle (for C#)
Re: Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
#39gen z, neocities is probably the closest; webdev isn't as common of a thing anymore, but the kids who're traumatized the right way out of normal social interaction towards programming and want to do webdev over other paths end up there quite a bit
Re: Ask HN: Is there a site popular with Gen Z where users can write HTML and CSS?
#40Any site that they like, doesn't matter which one.
IME, the easiest way to get an adolescent interested in programming is to show them the browser's built-in debugger.
Show them how to change a style rule or make a post look like it contains arbitrary text, and they'll be hooked.