Some people would have you believe that web development is a complicated mess of junk not worth bothering to learn. Others yet will tell you that you aren’t a “real programmer” if you develop for the web.

So why make websites?

The web is ubiquitous

Web browsers are some of the most popular applications in the world.

It doesn’t matter if someone has a desktop computer, a laptop, an iPhone, an Android, or an Amazon Fire tablet. All of them have a way to access the web.

The web is not a walled garden

The web is permissionless.

There isn’t a company that owns “web development”, where you need to apply for a developer account to post a website. You can just… post your website. You can even host it from your home (given the right security measures).

You can share your work, photography, journals, or whatever else for literally anyone else in the world to see with a few simple text files. How amazing is that?

The web is fun

Here’s some ASCII art of an owl.

 _____________
< hello there >
 -------------
   \\
    \\  ^ ^
       (ovo)
       (|||)
        v v

Here’s a picture of a random cat (refresh to get a new one).

Or cool personal websites, or maps of the world, or articles about dinosaurs.

The web is useful, and wacky, and human.

The web is more than just pages

Although I’m talking mostly about websites and browsers, using the web is much more than that.

Many desktop and mobile applications make use of web technologies on the backend even if you don’t realize it.

Fetching and interacting with data on the web is not just limited to your browser window.

The web is free

You do not need a fancy computer, or specialized technology to start playing around with the web. This is probably one of the plethora of reasons it is so popular for new developers.

Conclusion

Web development is fun, creating hypertext and hypermedia is fun.

Yes, modern web development gets messy.

Yes, it isn’t a good idea to make everything use a browser or a webview.