How long it took you?

Hello everyone,

So I've recently started doing jobs as Front End Developer and it took me quite some time for the first few website but it's going quicker and quicker now with every line of code. I know someone people who write code that used to take me two days with all the tweaking in just few hours from scratch to a finished version.

How long your first HTML and CSS design took to be finalised?

Did you get up saying F this and then returned with new ideas on how to fix the issue?

 

Don't remember how long it took me to get my first PAGE up and working the way I wanted it to work. What I do remember is that I did it using a shit WYSIWYG editor some 20 odd years ago. That experience forever soured me on using junk CMS editors. Today with Turdpress, jQueery, Bootcrap, and all the other crap out there, I think it would now be IMPOSSIBLE for me to make a decent page with one of them in less than a year even though I have been programming computers for over 37 years.

Since I only maintain my own website, I now use FoxPro to make the pages, meaning that when I need a new error-free page I can do it in minutes instead of weeks. And when I need to update/improve all 9000+ pages I can do that in less than an hour for simple changes, and slightly longer for complex changes.

 

My first real "design" was a page to allow people to read a special "last issue" of a (relatively) popular local comic. I got the artist's permission to put these online, got them as a digital copy, got a special drawing to use as a illustration, interview with the artist, etc. etc. I knew next to nothing about making websites, had NO knowledge of PHP, so I sat down and read up on creating websites with this new-fangled thing called CSS. I hardcoded every single page - no server-side at all, just images, linked via hardcoded pages, which I could navigate between using "next" and "previous" links. I also had an about-page, the interview, and so on and so forth. Pretty simple, the layout was black and white with some red color, since the comic itself was black and white, the only color-splash on the entire site was the illustration I got from the artist.

How long did this take me? I don't actually remember. I think the first draft was done in about a week, but that used tables, and had to be completely rewritten to use proper HTML and CSS. Which took about a month, I guess, of reading forums, Usenet and asking lots of dumb questions.

I don't have a copy of that site any longer (it was anyway rewritten later when I got more knowledge of PHP), but it was a fun page back then.