What you need to know about website coding languages (for beginners)

If there is one thing which I have come to appreciate in the past 1,5 years of building ExploreTECH , it is that building digital building platforms from a technical perspective can be incredible complex, and a lot of terminology you see online is usually not well understood by most people including myself.

Through lots and lots of questions and discussions with designers, developers and our new CTO Wasiq Ghaznavi I managed to learn a lot, but Wasiq also shared this great analogy which is easy to understand for anyone, about various coding languages for websites.

What does HTML stand for? HTML is the abbreviation for “Hyper Text Mark-up Language”. Basically HTML is the base structure for any website that exists, or any website that is to be made. If we were to relate the languages of a website with materials of construction of a building, it would go like this:

HTML –> Bricks and Concrete

Ugly, but sturdy. How big, how vast, how advanced and how easy it will be to grow it in future, all depends on the base structure made out of bricks and concrete.

CSS –> Paint, Wallpaper, Tiles and Lights

The beautification of the building to cover the ugly looking structure underneath. We use paint and wallpapers to beautify the slate grey walls of our building, Tiles to make magnificent patterns on the floor and exterior of the building and Lights to make it look all flashy and attractive. Same is the roll of CSS when it comes to making a website, it beautifies the look of the website.

JavaScript –> Escalators, Elevators and Digital Navigation Maps

Anything that makes the users life easier inside the building, may it be going up 20 floors effortless by just standing inside a box, or going up a single floor by standing on self-moving stairs, all can be related to the role of JavaScript in a website. It makes the users life easier by providing many on-screen functions.

PHP –> Security, Communication and Management

The building is ready for use but in order to use it, a certain level of management and security will be required. The building can stand there without management and security but then it will not be usable. Same is the case with PHP in website. Without PHP the website can exist but it will just be fixed information written on the page for people to view, but they will not be able to use the website. The most common example of a website which uses PHP can be Facebook, where you can read, write, add or remove content.

I hope this helps people understand this topic just a bit better.