Before JavaScript. Before React. Before frameworks. There was HTML and CSS.
And honestly? Those two languages taught me more about building for the web than anything that came after.
The First Win
I built my first "website" in early 2018. A single HTML file. Some inline CSS. It looked terrible by any professional standard.
But it worked. It loaded in a browser. People could see it.
That feeling — seeing something you made live on the internet — hooked me.
Why HTML/CSS Gets No Respect
Walk into any developer meetup and mention you're good at HTML. You'll get polite nods and subject changes.
Yet every website, no matter how complex, eventually renders HTML. CSS is what makes it look good. These are foundational skills that everyone underestimates.
Here's what I learned:
HTML: Structure is Everything
<header>
<nav>
<ul>
<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
</header>Clean structure makes everything easier. Bad HTML = impossible to style, impossible to make accessible, impossible to scale.
CSS: The Language of Design
Flexbox and Grid changed everything for me. Before them? Floats and clearfixes. Pain.
.container {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(300px, 1fr));
gap: 1rem;
}This one line creates a responsive layout that would have taken hours in 2015.
The Real Skill
HTML and CSS aren't about the syntax. They're about:
- Thinking in structure — How should this content be organized?
- Understanding layout — How do elements relate to each other?
- Debugging visually — Why does this look broken in Safari?
These skills transfer to everything else. React components? They're just HTML + CSS + JS. Vue? Same. Svelte? Same.
What I'd Tell My 2018 Self
Don't skip the basics. Spend extra time here. The frameworks will come — they always do — but the foundation matters.