I am so thrilled to be able to start this return journey into web development! My coding story actually begins over 20 years ago, back when I was about 10 years old. My parents had purchased our first modern computer, a Gateway 2000. I had seen websites for the first time and just had to learn how they worked! Can you imagine how excited I was when I figured out how to add images to my Angelfire page using the in-browser text editor? Before long, I was creating my own websites, manipulating regular text and links, creating hover effects and image maps, and even making frames using code in a regular text file. You guys remember frames? I once stayed up all night learning those. And now they’re obsolete. Funny to think!
Every couple of months, I’d start a new project or layout design. I can easily say that web design and 
front-end development passions of mine. I looked forward to trying out new styles and ideas using the power of HTML, DHTML, and JavaScript. Up until my first semester in college, web design and development played an important part in my daily life.
Then suddenly, I stopped.
I won’t go into detail about why this happened, but life got in the way… and life got really hard to handle. I gave up on a lot of things. And I went in a completely different direction to cope with the traumatic changes in my life. The day I let my domain name expire made the end of it all official.
Since then, as a way to cope with the aforementioned tragedy, I have been in public service and public education. So since 2005, I’ve pretty much let my passion for designing and coding websites die.
But then, when I was a 1st grade teacher back in 2015, I decided to get my Masters +30 credit hours (mo’ money, friends!)… and while researching potential classes and programs, I stumbled upon a really cool Masters-level program in the school of education at University of Missouri Columbia (Mizzou) called Information Science & Learning Technologies (ISLT). Through that department in the school of education, I was able to take a web development class that counted towards my +30 credit hours as a teacher. And so the story of code continues…
Guys (and gals)… I fell in love again! But imagine my surprise when I saw how much different (and cooler) things had gotten over the past decade! Do you all remember old elements like <body bgcolor=”06c”> and <font face=”Arial”>? Well, I had to suddenly unlearn them! And I had to quit using <b><b>, <i></i>, <center></center>, and <font size==”12px”. And so long to image maps, DHTML, and frames. Those are coding tools from the past!
And CSS! What a cool thing to come across over a decade later in my web development journey after such a long hiatus! And of course, this is only the beginning of my return!
Although I am not 100% sure what the future holds, I do know this. Now that I’ve finally stepped back into the world of web design and development, I will fill my days with web design and coding as much as I can!
And I’m going to love every moment of it!
Even on the days I yell at my computer. 😉
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