It occurred to me, recently, how satisfying learning how to develop for the web could be. Sure, there are the frustrations when you type in a few lines of code and something that should work doesn’t, but once you spend enough time staring at the screen (or double-checking all the lines you know you were supposed to include, or dragging in a third party for help), there’s a good chance that you’ll eventually figure it out. And at that point, the feeling is magnificent.
Because it’ll be working. And if it’s been deployed to a live site, you can always send the URL to someone to show it off.
Me: Check this out!
Friend: All I see is a button, and all it does is change colors when my mouse hovers over it. I don’t even know what the button does.
Me: I know! Isn’t that so cool?
Friend: …
Successfully troubleshooting code for the web reminds me of the satisfaction I used to feel in eighth grade when I successfully applied a new concept to a slightly tricky algebra problem. But it’s even better because whereas the final answer to an algebra problem is kind of useless, the final answer to a web development problem has several possible real-world implications.
For example: