Learning CSS with the Help of Coursera

It’s been a while since I’ve been meaning to learn how to be a Web Developer. No to sound negative, but even when I studied and engineering degree (in chemical engineering, not computer science) I think I am too old to start with any other career, but my husband and my brother believe in me and really, I don’t have anything to loose.

I’ve been meaning to start for months, but I keep putting it aside because I think deep down I am going to fail miserably at it. My only hope is that one day I will look back at this blog post after I have earned my first penny as a web developer. I can always dream, right?

Actually, two summer ago my brother (who did study computer science), sat two hours each day for a month to teach me HTML, CSS and JavaScript. He did an excellent job, but I then started working in the all time consuming teaching job and simply forgot everything that he’d taught me.

I also took an HTML class about a decade ago. Online. Nothing stayed with me, apparently.

So, now I am back again. I am restarting an HTML/CSS/JavaScript class over at coursera.com (https://www.coursera.org/learn/html-css-javascript-for-web-developers).

I like Coursera because it’s free. It also has the option of paying for the class which will give you a certificate, but right now I don’t feel like I can afford that. It has served as a great reminder of what my brother taught me two years ago. I have only completed 2 lessons out of 8, but I have been working on my own personal website to get more into the mechanics of web design as I learn how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

I was able to do a mock-up of the website I want to do. It’s still in the development phase, but all the coding was done by me. I spent about an 1 1/2 looking around the web to try to get CSS to do what I wanted it to do. I still have another lesson to go on CSS in the Coursera course, but I honestly think that doing is the best teacher.

Here’s what I’ve been able to do so far: