> An average Joe is supposed to feel great about writing something that renders
Indeed HTML is great for that, but the problem is that you never "level up". Once your content renders, you are done. A lot of Joes may be interested in how things work behind the scenes or in making things "correct" more than "just working". It would be great, from a pedagogical point of view, to have browser render Joe's content (for instant gratification) but also to point out that "Ehi, on line 32 you closed </p> before </i>. It should be the other way around because of this rule called nesting, have a look at it". I think we are wasting a lot of man-years around the globe for the lack of such warnings.
In the education of many people, compiler errors and warning had exactly this function: they made you do whatever you wanted (as long as decent) but they would also pointed out the basic mistakes ("Ehi, on line 14 you print the variable prg_name, but that variable has not been initialized, beware").
Indeed HTML is great for that, but the problem is that you never "level up". Once your content renders, you are done. A lot of Joes may be interested in how things work behind the scenes or in making things "correct" more than "just working". It would be great, from a pedagogical point of view, to have browser render Joe's content (for instant gratification) but also to point out that "Ehi, on line 32 you closed </p> before </i>. It should be the other way around because of this rule called nesting, have a look at it". I think we are wasting a lot of man-years around the globe for the lack of such warnings.
In the education of many people, compiler errors and warning had exactly this function: they made you do whatever you wanted (as long as decent) but they would also pointed out the basic mistakes ("Ehi, on line 14 you print the variable prg_name, but that variable has not been initialized, beware").