Making a Website is for Everyone

Dave asked what makes people excited about building for the web and Thomas answered with this wonderful articulation:

the web is the only programming platform (that I know of) that considers its builders regular people, not IT Professionals and continues to write standards with that consideration.

Love this.

I made my first website as a young teenager because the barrier was so low (and I dropped out of my very first computer science course after the very first class because the barrier seemed so high).

I realize complexity enters the scene because the web is world wide. There are so many people trying to do so many things with it, that it has to be wide and deep to accommodate all those use cases.

But I absolutely love the idea of actively preserving a low barrier to entry for future generations of people.

“Would teenage Jim have been able make a website now-a-days?” That’s the question I ask myself every time I write a blog post about new technique X or tool Y.

Over time, the direction of web technology always trends towards complexity. Simplicity is achieved as a concerted, mindful fight against this.

The web’s low barrier to entry led me to a career that has been a boon for my life. I hope it can do the same for others.