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I was pretty desperate to learn to code for a really long time. I was back and forth between HTML and CSS, googling tutorials frantically but still feeling lost, and later, variations of C. For whatever reason, I desperately wanted to write a text adventure game—and I could, I actually could, at least to a point. I knew the basic building blocks off by heart ("knew" because I don't often remember how to do these things when I come back to them), and could make an intro sequence, some player input, and some real response to that player input. But no matter what I read, no matter what code I put in, I didn't understand anything beyond that.

I could list off all my frustrations and shortcomings but that's not really the point. I just wanted to put this into words, because I think it's kind of mildly interesting. Especially now that I'm back to HTML (and a bit of CSS, and a bit of Javascript). Yeah, it's nothing compared to C, I know. But it feels so much easier and more fun this time, and you'd think that means I'm learning less, but I feel like I learned a ton last night, and a bunch more tonight.

If you didn't know, I'm using Zonelets to write this blog. Zonelets isn't some special app, although from the way I just used it in a sentence it sure does sound like one, huh? It's more of a template. I just downloaded the zip, uploaded those files to Neocities, read the files, and started messing around with them. You really can just start messing around. Stare at things for long enough, and they start to make sense. Even in script, which I was completely clueless about, and might still be. If you asked me to write some working script from scratch, I couldn't do it. But honestly, that's okay. I mean, look how much I've learned already! (Are you looking? Do you see anything? No, I know it doesn't look like much. Just go with it, okay? Jeez.)

Moral of the story, it's okay to have help. You don't need to be completely independent to succeed, and honestly? When you're completely independent, you won't succeed. I didn't. Go mooch off somebody else's code, and one day you might be able to do it yourself.

— Barb

God, that was cheesy. I thought I was some annoying emo kid, and now I'm Danny Tanner.