“The Web will be a place where the whim of a human being and the reasoning of a machine coexist in an ideal, powerful mixture.”
Julian Lucas, “Tim Berners-Lee Invented the World Wide Web. Now He Wants to Save It,” Annals of Technology, The New Yorker, September 29, 2025.
I believe students should learn the fundamentals of web languages and the history of the Internet. As mentioned in Julian Lucas’s article, the web is no longer a space where humans and computers work separately, but rather a space where the creativity of humans and the logical and analytical abilities of computers come together and coexist.
However, this coexistence does not happen automatically. In digital spaces like the web, the way we use these spaces determines whether humans actually engage with machines or simply consume their outputs. Therefore, learning to code is not only about learning a skill but also about acquiring a new language for understanding the digital spaces. Also, coding helps us to realize that a digital model is designed with specific perspectives and interpretations. This shows that to understand how ideas are implemented in the digital space, coding plays an important role.
I had learned Python a bit in high school, but I always found it really difficult. I thought HTML and CSS would feel even harder since they were entirely new languages to me, but following tutorials step by step made it much easier than expected. Also, I got a better understanding of how the interfaces are created, which had always been a question for me when using websites. I realized that coding is not as complex as I thought; it is an intuitive tool anyone can understand if they learn step by step.
<html>
<head>
<title>My coding example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is my first time trying html.</h1>
<h2>My experience was...</h2>
<ul>
<li>Easier than I expected</li>
<li>Fun!</li>
</ul>
<h2>I wonder...
<ol>
<li>How do I change colors?</li>
<li>How do I put an image?(I'm still confused)</li>
</ol>
<h3><em>Wow</em> this is so cool! I'm glad I'm getting better at this.</h3>
</body>
</html>
I think that something that was interesting to me was learning how viewing a webpage on the internet is even possible. I had not thought of these interfaces as a space. I understand that it is a landscape and that there exists a whole other world on the internet, but I had thought of these spaces are somewhere to navigate and explore passively; I had not considered these individual places that one could actually interact with.
Interesting point about how we see coexistence play out in online spaces! The way people engage with computers is very intriguing, and as they get smarter, continued developments will be relevant to this dynamic you talk about even more in the future. I also enjoyed hearing about your process. I found through the tutorial that once you understand the fundamentals, you can understand a lot more, so I am happy to hear it was the same for you as well. What kind of elements did you practice with using CSS?