The point of this site is to help someone learn the basics of programming using freely accessible tools and technologies. The content on How to Program should be able to be practiced on even a freely available computer at a local library with nothing more then a text editor, a web browser and an internet connection to view this site of course ;). I have chosen to use HTML 4.01, CSS and JavaScript mainly because they are freely available and show how to properly seperate the different parts of an application. Before we get to the actual programming part though we will need to go over some theory so that we can understand what programming languages are and how to use them properly. After the main theory portion is over we can get in to basic programming with HTML, then we will start to add in CSS so that we can make the website look good and finally we will add some JavaScript so that we can do some cool stuff like adding maps to the web page or a simple RSS feed reader. After we are comfortable with the languages we can dive into creating a small application using proper development techniques and even make some nice documentation so that we can plan and communicate our designs and rationales to other programmers, testers, managers, clients and whoever else wants to know about it.
Of the three languages stated only one is considered a programming language, Javascript is a scripting language that is normally used to add functionality to web pages but is also used in other applications. The other two languages HTML and CSS are used differently. HTML is a markup language used to define the structure of documents and to add semantic information so that computers can understand them better. The precursor to HTML is SGML. CSS is a language that extends markup languages by defining the layout and other non-semantic properties of a structured document. Together CSS and HTML can define a documents structure and how it is displayed in different contexts such as on screen, in print and when spoken.
One thing to remember about this site is that even though I am teaching HTML, CSS and JavaScript, these are large subject areas and after reading through this site you will still only have a cursory knowledge of each. I will try to list links and maybe create some tutorials that can explain the intricacies of these languages much better then I. Also I would like to invite everyone to send me an email and let me know what you think of this site, send in corrections or just to chat.
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