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Also, lots of library books.

My first experience with HTML and CSS was from Neopets! Later, I started making an actual website using iWeb on the Mac too!

Coding HTML in the mid 90s because I was too cheap to pay someone else to do it for me, and then I went to work for a computer company that paid me to do it for clients. But I dipped out in favour of museum education when HTML2 launched.

I was fascinated with the internet and the ability to connect to anyone / anything from anywhere. My family had internet super ealy one. Got started with reverse engineering geocities pages which lead into MySpace customizations (first paid gig). Customizing MySpace pages absolutely hooked me

Making plugins for DOS based BBSes in the early 90s for PcBoard and Remote Access

MySpace for sure.

Was a comp sci and business major at college. My CS capstone project made it clear I hadn’t learned much about web dev. Got a marketing job after graduation but never stopped learning web dev on the side in hopes of building a nice side project.

We had to build a website in my first semester CS class back in fall 1997. My first webdev job would have been around 1999. A professor hired me to write an HTML generator that could be run on a folder full of images to generate a website of thumbnails. I used C++ which was not ideal

Saw the horrors of academic programming in matlab with no git and no tests and thought there had to be something better.

Same

I needed to be able to post my Dogz online for adoption. (And then, eventually - like 16 years later - I did a computer science degree)

"Cracked version of Dreamweaver on a CD-ROM" Take me back to the good old days. 🥺

We needed a website for our skate club! 🛹

In 2000 I still had an Amiga, a computer long since past its prime, but I was a young tech nerd into tinkering so with a Freeserve CD (a UK ISP), a shareware TCP/IP stack called Miami and a Browser that didn't have CSS, I spent weeks writing a homepage using tables for layout.

Downloading web pages at home and spending months at the grand parents offline breaking them apart and back

DTP to HTML to CFML/JS/CSS. After that, Python/modpython/Apache, then Django then AWS SAM using Python.

I wanted to make a social networking site for people who'd just started their careers at BT at the same time as me, so we could arrange to go to the pub get to know each other. It was 1996.

I remember learning about HTML in one of my classes at elementary school.

Got introduced to Frontpage 97. Later switched to macromedia dreamweaver and printshop pro for design to create some fancy table layouts for counter-strike clan sites.

Curious about your story, I assume you came through a design route but where did it start and how did you get into education?

Also had an ActionScript book which taught me how to use Flash to create cool animations

I learned basic html to make basic game websites on geocities and angelfire. In eleventh grade a guy in our neighborhood found out and offered me a job at his small Internet marketing startup.

Geocities

I was really into Game Maker as a kid, and one day one my parents came back from work with a copy of Programming PHP that a coworker has given them since they knew I liked programming.

I had a gym and felt a needed to do something else. Tried a bunch of things and ended up in night college for Design and Multimedia. Academic Week from Computer Science had a 30min lecture on HTML5 + CSS3, mandatory attendance for my class Everybody fell asleep. I got hooked, never looked back.

Funny enough my first gig was indeed creating myspace layouts 🙈

Made myself a Quake III Arena website when the game was released, using mainly Dreamweaver. Had no Internet at home at the time so I needed some kind of database to list weapons and stuff, with annotations. Used the family « Bondi Blue » iMac G3. Glorious times.

I went to school to learn about programming and IT systems in the early noughties. Picked up web development in a project building a website and have loved it ever since. It has been about twenty years since my first introduction and my career for more than sixteen now.

Maybe non-traditional :) I started in desktop development (C++, Pascal), tried building a browser and fell in love with web development - it was open, linkable and so forgiving of the funny code folks threw at browsers. Worked on MySpace themes; still amazed Tom got so many folks to learn to code!

I think I was… 10? Wanted to make a website to show off the coolest thing in the world (screenshots of Mega Man Battle Network I had crudely edited dialogue from The Matrix into) and I wasn’t getting the results I wanted from MS Word’s “export as webpage” functionality

Weirdly for me it was from maps.

The tech probably carbon dates that, but I made my first web page in 1996 by viewing source and Trying Stuff(tm). At some point I found resources like Glassdog, got pointed at A List Apart, found the Web Standards Group, etc...

Couldn’t get a job as a designer 😄

Is the statute of limitations up on those stories?

I learned through creating custom WordPress themes

Microsoft Word > Save as Web Page > ... that's not how it was supposed to look! > View Source

All of these suggestions make me feel so old 😂

Did a traineeship, i.e. got paid to do a two month bootcamp and then got handed a position as a consultant. Three years later, I got my second job as a senior 🎶 Before I started my coding experience was limited to customizing Tumblr themes lol

2003 for a marketing class I needed to develop a functional mockup for a project and used Macromedia Fireworks, I think I didn't even used Dreamweaver. The next year I went into a web design / development class (including Flash). There I had my first JavaScript experience too (shacking windows).

HTML 2.0 book 😣 Just self-interest and future thinking. Knowing it was going to be something. Should have done more with it sooner, but hey the ADHD brain does want it wants.

man, great question. Spent a few years working in the craft beer industry, before getting let go from a job and having to find my way to a better financial future. Worked at web dev for a few years both on my own and in a degree program before getting myself a job in the field.

Back in 1996, I discovered MS Front Page, Netscape Composer, and David Siegel's "Creating Killer Web Sites." My main guide back then was the German "SelfHTML" community. By '99, I went pro and built a successful career.

Comp sci but quickly realized web dev was a portal to entrepreneurship. Being able to build a business from nothing in this space is just incredible.

My Dad taught me starting from age 7

Italian edition of "Programming in PHP" :D I even found some printed out pages of the PHP documentation website at my mother's place, since as a kid I had limited internet time

neopets...

Minecraft

Started messing around with homestead.com in high school because I wanted my own homepage. Then taught myself html with this: www.thriftbooks.com/w/html-for-t...

NOTPRON

MySpace and Dreamweaver but mostly learning on the job Had an internship updating product descriptions on a brewery’s website Got a job where I had to debug broken email templates and landing pages Took some bootcamp courses later!

Just want to build a website when I was in college, start it with Notepad, Dreamweaver and w3school.

You are so impressive Rachel

It was 1996. I was jobless and my partner was pregnant... I know, I know it's not the same! Honoured to be a 96'er with you @rachelandrew.bsky.social I've learnt so much from you over the years. Anyway, my first son was born and I got an internship and pile of code books all on the same day.

Bootstrapped a strategic internet marketing business and it was cheaper to read books and learn LAMP on a virtual host than hire someone. Ultimately took a job for benefits, solved problems with frameworks, architecture, and teamwork. never stopped learning.

Needed website for my counter strike clan. Only the 6 members and 3 IRC bots knew about us. Made a flash site, with a interactive map of Scandinavia. We were called Team Nordic, that’s the last time I really dreamt big 😃

First time was when I was 11 years old, check out a HTML 1.0 book at school library. I did some exercise in notepad. Never touched web dev until I was 20yo when I did an internship during IT diploma. Then only when I was 27 for another internship during uni. Been doing this pro 7 years now.

I graduated at the height of the recession in 2008 and couldn't get a job. I started a business repairing PCs and needed a website. I spent forever teaching myself some basic web dev stuff and realised those skills were a lot more interesting to me. Been hooked ever since. 🙂

Webmonkey taught me everything I know

I know 👴👴👴

I don't think I know AOL has hosting!

I started making some programs in TI-BASIC to solve highschool physics problems and learned from there.

Started with UI design, went to the web somewhere round when Windows 8 and Metro came out. First thing I did was to try and replicate the Start menu but with GPU compositing.

Technically the first day of comp sci but basically didn’t do any web development for the first 10+ years of my career

In high school I was really into disassembling hardware and Frankensteining custom phones/laptops, so I went into electrical engineering at uni, only to realize programming was even more interesting

I was looking for a hobby. Tried music, writing and getting into sport. None of it stuck. Been at it nearly 18 months now and the shine still hasn’t hasn’t worn off 😀

Picked up an HTML 1 book from the bookstore on campus. Went down to the computer lab in the CS building and eight hours later, I had my first website up and running. Never looked back after that.

Hacking at MySpace layouts and AIM profiles.

Senior year of high school, late ‘96. Just started messing with FrontPage in a new computer lab, then discovered GeoCities and found learning HTML would be necessary to get the results I wanted. Eventually picked up some books. Before long, I started getting some freelance jobs for small sites.

Basic, then html from picking apart websites from the view html. 😂

I hand-coded a website for me and my friends to post our fantasy novels on. It had gifs! Of swords! I thought it was the coolest things ever. I was 12 😅

My first web project that anybody saw was an Everquest/Blair Witch parody site.

played with NCSA Mosaic as a side project while I was working at Autodesk. Wrote an AutoCAD extension to tie entities to web addresses. Back then, the mgmt did not "get" the web at all. In May '95, AOL offered me a chance to work on AOL dot com - I jumped at the chance, off to the races!

Started with just HTML and CSS, making pages to show off my Neopets 😜

2 years ago a colleague mentioned svelte so I had to find out what that word meant and that led to me learning JS

I built a web app to log orders and phone calls when I was in charge of orders at a small company. I saw someone on YT show how to use Google App Script to make an app on top of Google Sheets so I figured I’d try it 😅. It was Circa 2013 so it was in jQuery. Feel in love with JS pretty quickly 🥰

I was gutted when they closed Geocities.

I was a student. And my dean was looking for guys who were able to create a site for our faculty. It was 1999…

School Teacher - > Self Taught (Team Treehouse) - > Junior Frontend Developer

Ohh! I also made my first programming steps with Logo 🐢 and Basic (well, actually, QBasic). And my first attempt at making a web was with Dreamweaver 😅

Nothing like refreshing the page to get that counter number up. 🤣

expage and www.funkychickens.com/main.asp

Think it was a combination of starting programming in computer-science class in school back in the day and wanting to have my own website…

I started doing graphic design and found out people pay more money if I can code the design as well 😅

Comp Sci when I had to do a project all by myself (other group members gave up) using JS + HTML + CSS. I'm glad I did it alone, made me learn a ton and grow even more the passion I have for making stuff on the web!

Band websites and enthusiast sites for the book series “Redwall”

It started when we first got a computer at home with Windows XP, then learned to create HTML pages in school, and then later got a Computer Science degree.

It was around 1998, for fun, generating web pages from Word and Photoshop. Always learnt on my own, or on the spot.

Showing my age here but back in college with ASP and PHP just to make my own sites while doing my CS courses

Studied Computer Science with a heavy focus on media, with the intent of becoming a cutter, but fell in love with programming during my studies.

I studied HTML from a library book in 8th grade. Took web design and learned CSS in 11th grade. Got sidetracked for a long time (did a couple freelance gigs in 06) then studied web development in bootcamp in 2018

Setting up web pages and forums for Minecraft servers with MyBB. Very little «coding» though other than some CSS. Lost interest, then gained it back when starting university!

For me it was trying various things from game dev, graphic design to web dev, got hooked to it somewhere around 2019 when I was exploring various animation thingy with CSS. Loved the idea of being able to make things that I can use myself I made myself a link tree and deployed it to GitHub pages.

I bought myself an original iMac when it was first released, and they threw in a pirated copy of Dreamweaver. I was immediately hooked (once I'd finished downloading the Phantom Menace trailer). I'd done coding before (mostly Hypercard) but this was stuff I could actually share with other people.

Formatting content online made me realize it was code. It peaked my curiosity circa 2001… then learned about Flash and Action Script from CartoonSmart.com. Taught myself from then, sold my first website to my dev teacher at 16 for 20$ lmao. Then got degrees and stayed in the same lane ever since.

There was a computers magazine publishing an article every week teaching how to write simple web pages with notepad.

Netscape Navigator with <layer>

my parents didn’t let me play shooter video games, so when i was 10 i decided to make my own. that didn’t work out, but i did teach myself to code and in high school i pivoted to web dev

i made my band's myspace absolutely sick as hell and then other bands got jealous so they paid me to do theirs

Made Wordpress templates in High-school then got your React course to kick of my career 💯

My college boss told me he thought I'd be good at IT. I took one class, and the rest is history.

Was a product manager, wanted to actually do the building

Made the jump from an office job. My cousin is in web development, and he showed me a couple of times what he was working on, and I was quite intrigued. Went the self-taught route, and ten months into the learning, I got my first job. This was mid 2022.

Dipped my toes in with MySpace, learned more building a website for my photography, then went through The Odin Project

From doodling around with max4live js patcher to HTML + jquery

MySpace made me jump from print :)

Made a Wordpress site for my cousin and felt accomplished what I saw it online

I did an electronic engineering degree but hated all the maths and only aced the software modules. Finished the degree and started doing electronic design at a startup. I became their first software developer a year later 😂

When I was 13 I started taking computer lessons at a school, learning the office suite, learning this tool that Microsoft had to build websites but I cannot remember the name 🤣 could it be Microsoft publisher? 🤔

For sure, a lot of other people learned animation concepts with Flash and later moved to more code-focused tools. ☺️ For me, after learning Photoshop layers, HTML structure and CSS was much easier to understand (as it is layers of DOM elements on a page).

Majored in Graphic Design in the late 90s, and the web curriculum was essentially nonexistent. It was clear to me this was the future of design, and web design led to CSS led to JavaScript led to being a front-end dev 25 years later.

It was pretty much a natural progression of the time. We needed to allow our Windows app HR system to provide employee self service. AngularJS 1.3 had just been released and I was the only dev who was willing to try. Has been quite the ride.

Started making websites for anime I liked on Geocities as a kid > moved to my own host after learning about Dreamweaver and an early CMS called Newspro > lots of WP heavy work > JS ecosystem