It's 2026. I see AI being discussed everywhere. Everyone is excited, frustrated, anxious, and anticipating the next leap that AI makes. In all this, people are, of course, still entering into web development and starting off with HTML.
Firstly, let me address that. If you're about to step into the field of web development, you should first spend some time understanding the World Wide Web that you'll be devoting your whole career working for (assuming that you don't explore other fascinating topics in computer science).
Speaking of which, I've made a dedicated "mini" course on The Web. If you're really willing to, you can complete it in a day or two. But I guess you have other work to do (probably a full-time job, or kids to play with) and therefore you can spare an entire week for it. No need to rush!
Anyways, coming back to the topic at hand, once you really do enter HTML, the question is How to learn HTML in 2026? Should you even be learning it or skipping it completely in this weird era of "vibe coding" (I don't like that term)?
I recently discussed this briefly on Reddit but now I've decided to turn it into a full-form discussion. Let's go! (Oops, I forgot to say 3, 2, 1. Whatever...)
Do you need to learn HTML?
First things first, do you need to learn HTML? The answer is yes! It's hard to imagine one becoming a web developer (okay, even a vibe coder) without knowing a thing or two about HTML.
But this doesn't mean that you need to spend hours and hours learning HTML. Absolutely not! Nobody has the time to go through 4-hr videos on YouTube on HTML or through huge dumps of text discussing those ideas of HTML — such as forms or multimedia — that most newbies won't use in their early days.
And that brings me to the second question up next — the hot take.
How to learn HTML?
Before anything, I want to convince you that you don't need to spend hours and hours in learning HTML. After having analyzed the majority of courses out there, I've noticed one common issue with all of them: they have super long curriculums.
Look, you and I both know that AI is changing the way things are being done today. In learning platforms, however, I'm not seeing any such change besides the fact that you can "ask questions from AI" or that you have fancy "AI tutors" to teach you. Okay good but what about the learning approach. Does that have nothing to do with the advent of AI?
Well, it does. And that's why it's important to think differently when learning in the year 2026 and beyond. So here's how to learn HTML...
Focus on just these bare minimum ideas to begin with:
- What HTML is and what it means for it to be "hypertext".
- Elements, tags, and attributes.
- Headings (
<h1>to<h6>), paragraphs (<p>), links (<a>), and list (<ol>and<ul>). - Block-level vs. inline elements (
<div>and<span>included). - A few text related elements (
<strong>,<em>,<sup>,<sub>, etc.). - Presenting code (
<code>and<pre>). - Embedding images (
<img>). - Tables (
<table>,<tr>,<th>, and<td>) and how to merge table cells (rowspanandcolspan).
That's it. You don't need anything more in the beginning.
Most importantly, I've omitted three seemingly big topics from here: forms, semantic HTML, and meta elements.
The reason isn't because I don't think they are important — in fact, I feel the complete opposite. Hands-down it's important for you to learn about forms, semantic HTML, and meta elements but not in the beginning. That's the whole point.
For example, to work with forms, you need to know about web servers. Now, if you're just starting out with HTML, this can be a big expectation — and honestly, an unnatural expectation. You're much better off to learn about forms once you learn PHP or Node.js (both server-side technologies).
Similarly, when it comes to semantic HTML (by which I mean elements like <article>, <nav>, <header>, <footer>), you need to be equipped with such ideas like ARIA and web accessibility. Again, in the beginning stages, this is too much to wrap the mind around. You should defer learning semantic HTML until you finally hit web accessibility when it all starts to make sense.
And as for meta elements (like <link> and <script>), you do learn them eventually when you learn CSS and JavaScript, respectively. So I don't see any point whatsoever in teaching them to beginners who should only be concerned with HTML at the moment.
To make the important clarification again: I'm NOT saying Don't learn forms or semantic HTML.. What I'm really saying is Learn them at the right time. And the right time is not now.
A "mini" HTML course
Before ending, I want to let you know that I happen to have created an HTML mini course that covers just these essentials. My aim is to save your time and save you from the "content circus" that's going on out there.
And honestly, if you like this approach, the rest of my mini courses follow the same pattern — no fluff, just what you need to learn at the moment. (For you DEV readers, I have a special 40% discount coupon DEV40 that you can avail at the checkout in case you decide to purchase the subscription.)
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