14 / Why everyone starts with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Welcome to Issue 14!

Whenever someone decides to “learn to code,” the journey almost always begins in the same place: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. On the surface, that can feel like a rite of passage--these languages are approachable and you can build something tangible with just a few lines. But there’s a deeper, technical reason why everyone starts here.

Browsers.

Every web experience requires a browser, and browsers only understand three things: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. That’s it. You can write in frameworks like React, or in back-end languages like Python, Ruby, or PHP, but none of those reach the end user directly. At some point, they all need to be transformed into the same trio that browsers can render.

This is what makes them foundational. HTML structures the content. CSS styles it. JavaScript brings it to life with logic and interactivity. Together, they form the universal “lingua franca” of the web. No matter what you learn after this point--TypeScript, Rust, Go, or whatever comes next--if it touches the front end, it will eventually come back to these three.

And that’s why product designers, in particular, should start here. You’re already fluent in thinking about interfaces and experiences. Learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript connects your design instincts directly to execution. The skills compound. The patterns repeat. And once you grasp these fundamentals, everything else you learn in programming will feel less like foreign territory and more like a variation on a theme.

So don’t overthink where to begin. Start with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Not because they’re the simplest languages, but because they’re the bedrock of everything users see, click, and interact with on the web.

Let’s get Technically Lit,

Nick

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