Little ditty 'bout Katie McLaughlin...

Clearly this page doesn't pertain to learning HTML per se, but it helps put in to perspective the whole notion of learning a new skill/language/subject. Knowing HTML may quite possibly be the one attribute that helps one candidate land a coveted job over another. Or, it may never come up in our careers -- but our minds will have been made "more interesting" nonetheless.

This page is just a basic intro/course description for an HTML class taught at UC Berkeley. It's really just a few sentences, but it's one of those short on words/long on meaning pieces of text that I admire because it gets to the meat of what HTML is all about in a very intelligent way. What struck me, though, was the line that states: "... it's valuable to know HTML even if your day job involves working with a content management system... " I work with a CMS all day! As I've mentioned before, I work for CNN.com and mainly produce interactive features and such, yet I know shockingly little about them there Internets! This course will hopefully help me bridge that gap between the material I am comfortable with, and that which intimidates me.

To paraphrase Denzel Washington's character in "Philadelphia" (Heck, this may even be a direct quote considering I've seen this film so many times... ): "I want you to explain it to me like I'm a two-year-old." This site does just that! When I am learning a new skill, I want material that is utterly foreign to me to be Kindergarten-ized as much as possible. I would not be the least offended if I saw the following (and hopefully with pictures!): "See Spot mark up the plain text document. Mark up the plain text document, Spot, mark up the plain text document!"