Julia EvansDec 19, 2024

I don't know if it's possible to get a good answer to this but: if you learned how to make websites with, like, users who can login and do things where the website stores stuff in a database, without doing it as a job, how did you do it?

I feel like in principle I know all of the basic pieces (HTTP, HTML, CSS, SQL, CORS, various programming languages, etc), but also somehow it still feels extremely hard to me

(no more replies please there are enough)

Show threadJan Lehnardt Dec 19, 2024
@b0rk from online tutorials and the php documentation in ~2000.
Show threadBen RamseyDec 20, 2024

@janl @b0rk I sometimes think if I were starting out now, it might be much more difficult.

Back in the day, it was easy-peasy: shared hosting with PHP, database, and FTP access. I’d just upload files, see what worked and what broke, rinse, repeat.

Show threadJulia EvansDec 20, 2024

@ramsey @janl i'm not sure I'll ever understand the "it was so easy to develop with PHP + FTP" thing, it kind of feels like you had to be there

(it sounds hard to me, like developing with no version control?? no push to deploy? no local dev environment?)

Show threadBen RamseyDec 20, 2024
@b0rk @janl You asked how I learned. 😁
Show threadJulia EvansDec 20, 2024
@ramsey @janl absolutely not trying to criticize! just a bit surprised to hear it described as "easy" :)
Show threadBen RamseyDec 20, 2024
@b0rk @janl All I had to do was focus on the code. I didn’t have to learn those other pieces at the same time, which, to me, would have been pretty big hurdles. There were very few moving parts, so to speak.
Show threadKevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦Dec 20, 2024

@ramsey @b0rk @janl Yep. Edit a file in notepad, drag it to the server in WSFTP or CuteFTP, and your changes are live.

I wasn't as much of a fan of developing apps with DBs and logins that way, but it was still eminently possible.

Show threadKevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦
@ramsey @b0rk @janl for the more complex systems, i liked Allaire HomeSite (later purchased by Macromedia/Adobe). It allowed me to configure one-click FTP site deploys directly from the IDE.
Dec 20, 2024 at 12:40amWeb
Show threadBen RamseyDec 20, 2024
@kboyd @b0rk @janl I used DreamWeaver. By then, I was working for a company, but we still didn’t use version control or any special deployment systems.