Brett_Tabke - 9:01 am on Jul 25, 2002 (gmt 0)

While in the state of wondering "what's next", I've always found it helpful to go back to the beginning and get a historical context.

When we learn something new, we often just jump right in and learn "how things are done". I've got a neighbor who has installed cable systems for years, yet he has no clue how the whole system really works. If he'd do just a bit of historical digging for background info, he'd understand just what it is he does by connecting this cable to that connector to get y to show x and make the little red like blink.

Same is true for web development. If you can take a bit of time and look at the bigger picture than just what we throw on the page and up in a visitors browser, the context will help in ways you can't see at first.

For example, maybe take some time and study just how your pages get back to the browser. Example topics: http, tc/ip, history of hyper text, history of page markup languages. Just coming to terms with how it all glues together [xoc.net].

After that, I'd take a look at how the operating systems work in relation to page display. This is a huge area to study and I'd even include as much low level "how computers work" information as you can possibly soak up. Sooner or later you'll start to "think digital". When that happens, all sorts of currently confusing items will become clear - like magic - a rare moment of clarity.

I can still remember when that happened for me. I'd worked on computers for a few years, both hardware and software. They were still these mystical beasts that eluded understanding. Sure, I could type in "hello world" as easy as the next person and hack something out in basic, but really understanding what was happening was mysterious and almost magical.

I'd picked up a good electronics book to do some modifications on an old Commodore VIC 20. I had all the info on tap from ones and zeros to crt screens, but it was just a disconnected jumble of info. The book I was reading spelled out simple computer addressing. Once I understood the whole life of a single byte in a computer program, things became so clear. It was like a room full of band members going from playing different tunes, to a world class symphony - it put context and connection on the apparent chaos.

You may think that sounds a bit high brow in relation to web development, but look at who the really good and successful site owners are out there. They are the ones who have a broad base of knowledge and rarely specialize in any one department. They understand it isn't just about specific code but about the whole process. Getting that level of big picture understanding only comes with a history contextual back drop. That wisdom slices through the noise of "what's hot" and comes out "whats going to work" and "what is going to last".