My initial experience with HTML/CSS was not a great start. My assumption before encountering HTML/CSS was that a programming language for web development, especially for front-end, cannot be that difficult, and it did not take long for me to figure out how wrong I was. With the unique coding syntax compared to other programming languages I experienced so far, I can remember struggling to create the finished product for the first few days of using HTML/CSS, which can be shown from getting DNF for my assignments WODs. However, the introduction to Semantic UI has made the web development process much easier and I understand what I’m doing to the web development.
The biggest concern I had on web development with raw HTML/CSS was it was difficult to search up the problem I was stuck on, such as aligning the items in the list with equal amount of margin. One of the key features that came with the implementation of Semantic UI was the ease of accessibility to example codes on Semantic UI’s own website. My experience with Semantic UI’s UI Docs were similar to using Oracle for Java, but much simpler and easier to understand. For instance, when I was creating a button for recreating McDonald’s main website, I was surprised how easy I was able to understand not just the basic implementation of the button, but with the variety of customization options. As a person who sometimes has to read the sentence multiple times to understand what I am trying to read, along with the code example it provided with the feature I am trying to implement made my view towards web development fun and interactive, rather than frustrating.
I believe the answer to this question depends on how deeply the developer is going to invest in the web developing field. For instance, as a developer who just got into web development, starting with an UI framework is an excellent choice, as it significantly reduces the difficulty of getting into the field. However, if the developer’s goal is to become an expert in web development and work in a big company, it might not be a good exercise for the developer to heavily rely on UI frameworks in the long term. The reasoning behind this is similar to why people use low-level programming languages like assembly, C/C++ are still used, despite the existence of easier programming languages such as JavaScript and Python. While it is definitely easier to program with high level programming languages from a developer perspective. Once the size and complexity of the program gets significantly bigger, to increase its performance with a limited memory environment, it is inevitable to use low level programming languages, which are relatively closer to binary codes for computers to understand. Similarly, while the coding experience with an UI framework might make the overall process easier, it would be beneficial to learn how to develop a web without the usage of UI frameworks, if the optimization and performance is going to be a key factor in the web development process.