Part 2: Learning is a Love Language

Much like Tim Berners-Lee being assisted by dozens of people in his endeavor to globalize the internet, you and I were also taught and carried by dozens of people in our own lives, in so many ways. Like Diana says in her manifesto -

In every way imaginable, we are nothing without each other, and this is even more true in this expansive age of the internet. Hardly anything is truly self-taught any more - it's not so much picking up skills and hardlining yourself to expand your knowledge, but instead a test to see how much you can learn from everyone before you, and especially how good you are at searching terms in this era of information.

Even these pages - this manifesto - already wouldn't be possible if not for the people listed in Part 1, nor for the friends that helped me figure out how to code, nor for Olia Lialina and her manifesto on The Vernacular Web, which served as a primary inspiration for the structure of this one.

You, reader, would not be who you are today if not for the people all throughout your life giving their insight on right and wrong, their guidance on how to do this or that, or plainly by witnessing their mistakes and deciding I really don't want to do that.

Where Diana points out her recipe for fried potatoes, I would point out the snippets of code created by people like petrapixel - (thanks for the 'jump to content' codeblock) - or even the fact that plenty of people helped me wrap my head around how to apply different kinds of layouts to my site. I wouldn't be half the cook I am without people like Adam Ragusea and Ethan Chlebowski and their dozens of food science-oriented videos.

I could've just used Squarespace or made another Carrd or taken any of the dozens of easy routes to make my own website - but that wasn't enough for me. I've spent enough time taking the easy way out and putting in halfhearted effort to use bits of HTML here and there. I'm a richer individual for the trial and error I went through. My website means more because I made it myself. I've put in the effort to learn something new - to follow the trail of my forebearers - to stand on the backs of giants, the hundreds of thousands of people who worked to build the web, long before I made my way here.

You can always take the easy way. Nobody can stop you. You can cut all the corners you like, simplify it and distill yourself as much as you want, but how much is it really worth?

If you give yourself the benefit of the doubt, if you push yourself to learn something new, you can and will be amazed by the things you can accomplish - both by what's already out there, and by your own force of will. You'll feel fulfilled. You'll be proud of yourself. And, to your surprise or your chagrin, more people will come to you. If you try to do cool and interesting things - people will notice, and they will encourage you, and sometimes, they'll stick along for the ride. They want to learn about you, they want to learn from you, and they could have plenty for you to learn, as well.

But you have to start somewhere. It can seem overwhelming, and intimidating, and baffling. The internet has existed for decades, and there are dozens of HTML tags and CSS attributes and it can feel paralytic to consider trying to learn it all.

But if you look back...

Nothing you know was learned overnight. All of these things had to be sought after, repeated, reinforced, reiterated. It took time, and effort, and dedication. A website is no different. Coding, really, is no different. Don't look to languages like Python or Java or C++ and feel terrified by what they can accomplish - HTML and CSS are much plainer. You aren't cutting the puzzle pieces yourself; they're already cut, it's just up to you to assemble them and decide how to paint them. Take it piece by piece. Search for what you want to accomplish, and build from there. Don't be afraid to use the tools that everyone else has strove to materialize for you.

And most of all... don't be afraid to break it, because a computer can always be fixed.