The Gibberish Invitation To Web Programming: Objects, HTML, Templating, Components, And Signals

The following text if for young people, and will sound like gibberish, but it is something you have to learn to understand.

Artificial Intelligence made really complicated things possible, it can teach you, and help you program things.

As a result, this gibberish, helps you quit your job, AI helps you learn programming.

And the ability to build powerful applications with the aid of AI, helps you out of poverty, and more importantly, fear of poverty.

The point of the following text to tell you, that the web browser, uses nested objects to display things.

As in a document contains a paragraph, and a paragraph contains text.

The browser has evolved beyond a text document with links, but there is no better technology than a tree of objects.

It is however complicated, HTML makes that a little bit simpler, but you also need a templating engine and reactive variables.

To simplify HTML, and give it the notion of re-usability.

While I talk about a templating engine, there is a browser technology called Web Components.

But it won’t let you prototype user interfaces as quickly, and it introduces it own complexity, a bit more advanced than templating.

You can however use custom elements in your templates, you can transition towards more hard core user interfaces.

I am a big fan of using HTML, HTML was born of XML, which in turn came from SGML.

HTML is a big deal, because it describes nested object relationships, it looks intimidating at first, but to manage objects without HTML is too much.

Managing objects programaticaly, is at the limits of a programmers mind, so they begin unnecessarily simplifying their creations.

There is one more layer that goes on top of HTML, and it is a kind of a cry for help, a simple templating engine.

And that allows HTML to have some ability to reuse HTML snippets, introduce ideas of variables, and even logic.

So we have nested objects, managed by HTML, with some magic provided by an HTML contemplating engine.

The younger me, would try to fix this, but this mess works, and it enables programmers to deliver user interfaces and software.

Nested objects have been done by every user interface framework, and three is nothing more powerful.

The chat UI that AI uses, is a tree of objects that show the input box, the chat history, and all the bells and whistles in even the most minimal UI.

Without HTML, there is no map for the underlying objects, and you can’t do HTML without the templating engine.

Because then you just end up repeating your self, so a component architecture is necessary to simplify the User Interface.

But, reusable spinets of components are not enough, you need variable support, interpolation.

And that means, forms, before you know it, you will be making a login box.

You must now handle user input, including live, while the user is typing, as in a search bar.

Instead of plain old variables you have to use reactive variables, variables that announce when they change, called Signals.

That is another simplification trick, wherever you are in your user interface.

You can now say, username.subscribe, and connect the data to the user interface you are developing.

Including, to parts of the HTML templating system, that may hide or show things dynamically.

For example when you open a dropdown menu, you can have a menuOpen reactive variable that returns true or false.

And you set the visibility of the drop down, just based on those two values.

menuOpen, will live at the heart of your application, but subscribed to from somewhere else.

Somewhere else that you never have to worry about, as now you can keep your reactive variables at the center of your application.

This queasy and confusing text would not exist, if it wasn't for the AI’s ability to teach you programming.

Couple of years ago personalized teaching was impossible, but now you can become a programmer on your own.

Learning at your own pace, and in your own sequence.

When you are new to programming, gibberish is a good of a start as any.

Your next step is to ask the AI to make tiny HTML/JavaScript programs for you, all in a single HTML file.

And then you start reading the code, and getting used to all the brackets.

AI answers all your programming questions, instantly.

When you are done asking for examples and tutorials, start asking about making simple lightweight clones of your favorite apps.

Learn inside out, and your first lesson here will be, that simple and lightweight code is more powerful than the original.