Just like yesterday.... I think?

HTML coding. It's been a while since I last seriously got into creating source code for a web page, almost seven years to be more precise. I must say that now that I take a look at the some of the additional parameters that have been added to the HTML universe, I feel a little outmoded. That's what I get for stepping away from the high tech industry for so long.

The main subject of this post, though, is concerning my first experience of HTML coding. I want to say that my first experience with creating and publishing web pages was back around 1995. I was basically a self taught computer geek (minus some of my former programming knowledge I gained when I was even younger...... yeah, BASIC! Yeah, Apple IIe's! Hell, want to know when I first started messing with coding? Remember Apple II+'s? Commodore 64's? How about an Amiga? Tandy anyone?) then. I was well immersed into the local BBS'es, i.e. Masterpiece, Prostar, Aurora, etc., etc. (these were well before AOL was even a notion on the minds of anyone, man this makes me feel old). This whole concept of the Internet/World Wide Web was greatly accepted and favored amongst the technophiles and we were all hungry for the knowledge that would allow us to manipulate and exploit this new technology. After all, we knew it was going to be BIG, but I don't think we could have necessarily foreseen that it was going to get THIS BIG.

Unfortunately, being able to procure the information, parameters, and specifications of this new coding language was a bit harder than one would imagine. After all, HTML was only developed a few years prior and you couldn't just look things up as easily as you can now. Luckily for me, I had a friend and a business partner (yeah, I was only 15 at the time but I had a business partner, now if we only knew how to run a business rather than being hardcore computer geeks) that had quite a bit more resources than I. It was he that turned me on to HTML coding.

Coming into this venue with an understanding of coding languages, it didn't take long to understand the basics of HTML coding. Instead of being stuck doing something like:

10 REM This program......
20 ? "Welcome to blah, blah"
.
.
.
2600 End

the more dynamic and evolved computing language was a quantum leap for me. The transition wasn't too difficult since the linear logic that most coding languages entail, existed as well with HTML. I must admit, just like any other coding language, it was a pain in the .... you know, when you would delve into doing something of a larger scale than getting mere texts to simply appear on a browser. But I digress as this is only about my first experience.

Ultimately, my first experience of coding some lines of text to appear on a web browser (The original Netscape, Yeah!) through HTML was more of an eye opener and in a sense, a catalyst for the eventual epiphany that would change my perspective of future realities. HTML itself was not difficult. And knowing what I had known about computers prior to then and seeing what they were like in 1996, only affirmed what I had believed. The evolution of computer technology would never stop and that the progress behind them would go at an exponential rate.

I know I got a little long winded on this blog, but hey, this is a nostalgic trip down memory lane for me.