From my perspective, all students need some basic knowledge about coding for websites. Websites provide users with visual access to data and ideas, making it a powerful tool to achieve data visualization and a perfect medium for transferring ideas. Therefore, having some basic knowledge of web designs facilitates students’ linking their in-class knowledge with the digital world. Although some may argue that a large language model can replace the job of creating websites, getting to know how the code works is essential. It is impossible that large language models never make mistakes. Thus, the ability to navigate through the code avoids struggling with correcting mistakes in the code.
I have some prior coding experience with html and python. Regarding the coding style, html is much more “redundant” than python, as html requires detailed declaration for every single line.
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to My Website</h1>
<p>This is my first paragraph.</p>
<p>This is my second paragraph.</p>
<p>This is my third paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>The complexity makes the code more structured and straightforward, which in fact simplifies the progress of understanding the code. Next time, I may try to code with css or java script instead of html, which may bring a new experience.
I agree that understanding website design can help students connect what they learn in class with the digital world. I also think your point about AI making mistakes is important. However, rather than learning HTML in detail to fix those mistakes, I feel like students could focus on understanding the basic structure of websites so they can recognize problems and communicate what needs to be fixed.