I FEEL THE POWER!
23 Feb 2017Prior to this past week, my knowledge of HTML was very minimal and my confidence for HTML was rock bottom. Then when I was introduced to UI Frameworks, in particular Semantic UI, my knowledge stayed at somewhat of the same level, but my confidence went through the roof. UI Frameworks are absolutely amazing! Sure, I totally agree that UI Frameworks are complicated to learn, but man oh man are they worth it. Though I have only been learning HTML for two weeks, so I would still consider myself a novice at HTML, I felt so powerful. Like honestly, in my mind, I had the image of Kevin Garnett during the post-game interview when the Boston Celtics won the NBA Finals.
With anything in life, nothing comes free. Yes, learning to use a UI Framework does require effort and time, but to be honest, it is not much. There will be times where you will be banging your head on your desk wondering why it isn’t doing what you hoped for, but most times that is fixed the moment you realize you misspelled “div”. What I love about UI Frameworks is that feeling of almost instant gratification. You don’t have to type much code, and you can build a decent looking website in under 30 minutes.
If you are like me, you are intimidated by HTML and all that code, because it can be really overwhelming to a newbie. The way I found best to learn UI Frameworks is to just practice, practice, practice. Knowing where to start can be intimidating as well, so I believe the best approach is to just break it down into parts. Top then middle then bottom. Sometimes there is a lot going on in the middle, so maybe skip it and do the bottom. For me, it helps me mentally when I see more completed work done. It gives me motivation, showing myself that I did all of that already, I can keep going.
Before anything though, I believe it would really help if you watched a video on someone else using a UI Framework first. If you have no clue what a UI Framework’s potential is, then this method is best. That way you can get a feel on why you should take a little bit of time and effort to learn this wonderful tool.
By the way, if you have no clue what HTML is, don’t start with a UI Framework, or at least in my opinion. You should learn the basics / foundation first, otherwise you will just be learning to match words pictures or actions, never actually knowing how to read. A good website I would recommend is Free Code Camp. Like their name implies, it is a website tutorial website that teaches you the basics of coding languages such as HTML.
I want to wrap this up with saying this, if you are a software engineer or a future software engineer, take the time to learn a UI Framework. I promise you that learning UI Frameworks will help you save time and energy, two of the most precious things to us.