The code behind no-code

Career Advice
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Hello! Thanks to everyone who keeps this community alive and share amazing resources here.

I can’t code and I want to learn, and this topic is to let you know what exactly I want to learn, and to ask what you believe would be the best way.
I work with WordPress websites: I use themes, page builders, plug-ins; I know design rules, UX/UI principles and methods, SEO, content strategies, etc - but I can’t read a website code. Or at least: I can find something, sometimes I can understand a single line, but I can’t understand the structure and the logic behind - and this is what I want to learn.

First of all I want to be able to look at a long page of code and understand what language is it written in, what’s the relation between html, css and js, where one ends and another one begins, how they communicate.

Then I could be interested in learning more about more languages, the reasons behind the choice of a language to create something: is there a rule/need or a single element/function can be created using a language or another?
Is there a “general linguistics” in code? How can I study it?

I don’t need to perfectly master entire languages, because I do not aim at creating things from scratch. But I really need a guide to read behind a page, to understand the consequences of my code-free actions in a website. I want to be an aware designer, in order to make better choices.

I don’t know how relatable can this sound, if it’s a common need, and sorry if the web is plenty of specific resources and I wasn’t able to find them. I would be really grateful if someone could share resources, experiences, tips or any kind of idea to help me finding a direction.

What would you believe would be the best way to make the code behind no-code development understandable?

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Honestly, I’d go through the freeCodeCamp curriculum.

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The basics of web design is HTML + CSS so I would take Freecodecamps’s responsive web design course and get good at HTML and CSS. If you’re primarily a design, you can also look at JavaScript just so know how the plugins work, but I think advanced HTML + CSS and a preprocessor such as SASS or SCSS or LeSS might also be good enough.

2 Likes
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Thank you! I’m sure this is the best way.
But my question was also: is there a difference in learning to code and learning just to read code?
In human languages, sometimes you can learn a language enough to read a book without studying grammar, or still not being able to interact live. Is this a thing with code?

(In a magic world, I would like to have someone sitting next to me just to ask: what is this? and actually I would be more than happy if I could dive into complete courses, but this is something I should do while working full time)

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with html and css, somewhat, those are simple things - but there is still a difference between knowing html elements and css rules and being able to do complex layouts
programming languages even more, as knowing the syntax is different than problem solving

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You can’t really read code well without having some basic understanding of how the pieces work.

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Depends on how far you want to go?

You can go as shallow as “its HTML, CSS, JS working together within the browser”. To as deep as the interpretation of electrical signals on the motherboard sent via electrons moving through wires.

A more practical understanding would fall closer to the “shallow side”, where you would focus on understanding how those three technologies (HTML, CSS, JS) work together to do stuff within the browser, and how the browser works relative to the overall web. You could start either with the code, or the underlying technology, and work to the “other side” of the equation.

A resource like MDN is helpful here, as they have a number of well written articles related to how the web works, all the way down to how specific HTML elements, CSS, and JS methods all work.

Even if you don’t need to know the specifics of the languages and technologies that “work under the hood” of something like Wordpress, knowing generally how the web works is useful as someone just using it.

1 Like
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Yes! exactly: I am not even asking to fix problems, but I would be interested in getting a wider picture of the syntax (quite in a contemplative way)

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Yeah, for that I’d do the basic HTML and CSS lessons from freeCodeCamp to help you have a better big picture.

Javascript is trickier, but also valuable if you’re willing to put in the time. Focusing on no-code really limits what you can build.

1 Like
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Thank you very much, you really helped me framing the subject. And the simple translation of my needs in a correct language is a concrete step forward in understanding.
Knowing generally and correctly how the web works is definitely the first step.

And this is superinteresting:

A more practical understanding would fall closer to the “shallow side”, where you would focus on understanding how those three technologies (HTML, CSS, JS) work together to do stuff within the browser, and how the browser works relative to the overall web. You could start either with the code, or the underlying technology, and work to the “other side” of the equation.

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Last year during lockdown I tried following an online beginner JavaScript course, but I ended up with tons of questions and the only belief that I have taken the wrong turn - and long story short this is how I found freeCodeCamp.
So thank you, I definitely will start over again from here.

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The important next step is: doing your own research to find the answers to these questions. Or paying/finding someone to do this. The best approach is probably a mixture of both: first doing your own research, then getting feedback from a more advanced developer.

Every advanced/professional developer also has a lot of questions. Then their job is to find the answers.

As a advanced developer, the approach won’t change, just the difficulty of the questions.

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