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How I learned to code in 2 hours...

Matt Davison | The Code Crisis
Matt Davison | The Code Crisis
@immattdavison
Learning to code is a daunting thing for sure! There’s so much to learn, so many different possible starting points, and so many languages. Learning to code is an endless journey and no one ever knows everything about coding, but knowing a few languages isn’t as difficult as it seems. Here’s how I learned to code in 2 hours…

Starting my journey...
It was an afternoon in a national lockdown, Covid-19 making it’s way round while we all made an effort to stay at home and keep safe. Many of us seized this as an opportunity to learn something new, and so did I. Boredom was an overwhelmingly consistent feeling throughout the height of the pandemic. Not seeing our friends, being limited to just one outing per day, and it being ultimately safer to avoid the shops. So in February of 2021, with 2 hours spare, I sat down and my journey began.
Finding the right language...
When you look at a coding language it can seem massively overwhelming. HTML isn’t like that. Yes, HTML isn’t a powerful programming language that could automate the world and do all these cool things, but HTML is still extremely powerful and even more useful.
When you visit a webpage, it’s built on HTML. Often when you install an application it’s interface is built in HTML. HTML powers so many things. HTML really doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves for the years it has served us for!
So with HTML being a simple yet powerful language and essentially the foundation of the web, I decided this was the starting point for my journey!
Where I began...
So cool, I’d decided the language I wanted to start my journey with… now what?
It was at this point that I had to decide how I best learn and how I wanted to go about learning HTML. I looked at w3schools, but it’s a lot of reading and while you can go through it at your own pace, I needed visual learning, like video - with audio.
I did a quick search around YouTube and located the video that changed my entire view on the difficulty of getting into code. I found a 2 hour video from FreeCodeCamp which had been viewed over 4 million times, providing a full walkthrough of HTML and what each element does.
HTML Full Course - Build a Website Tutorial
HTML Full Course - Build a Website Tutorial
Moving on an developing my skills...
I spent a week after my initial 2 hours of learning to code in HTML practising building random pages with no styling, just getting a feel for how HTML works and remembering all the basic elements that are used repeatedly in every project!
After about a week of brushing up on my skills I was confident with HTML. A whole language that I could comfortably code in after 2 hours of learning and then just every day practise. That was crazy to think in the moment. I had gone from being terrified of code to being able to understand one of the most used languages in the world in 2 hours with a few hours here and there just practising.
From there I went on to study CSS and Javascript in the following weeks and started to build my first projects such as a basic calculator and a tech blog which quickly fizzled out as I started to focus more on where I could go next…
Why you should follow in my footsteps...
Learning to code is of course, not for everyone. Learning to code has however opened so many doors to me and enabled me to follow through with so many of my ideas and make other people’s ideas a reality with them at the same time through the power of the web development business (MJD Web Services) I was able to open just a month or two ago.
Learning to code has been a total game changer for me, I’ve been able not only to develop a new skill but open up new career opportunities, win prizes, and most rewardingly, bring my ideas to life.
MJD Web Services | Website Designer Leicestershire
MJD Web Services | Website Designer Leicestershire
Need a bespoke website? MJD Web Services is a Leicestershire based web design and development agency already trusted by clients across the globe.
mjdws.com
What I've done since...
Since the start of my endless learning journey through the world of code I’ve worked on a lot of different projects. I have seen failure time and time again, but I have seen success just as many times and there is always bound to be a range of both.
Some of the projects I have been able to complete thanks to this one afternoon in February 2021 have been…
Having the ability to simply decide I want to build something new and building it is so rewarding and is what keeps me developing new things every day!
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Matt Davison | The Code Crisis
Matt Davison | The Code Crisis @immattdavison

I'm Matt, front-end web developer based in England, UK.
I talk about code, lifestyle, and more!

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