KNOW HTML & CSS BEFORE LEARNING A SCRIPTING LANGUAGE

One of the questions about coding or programming has always been what to do first, which program is the most popular that might actually produce paid work.  A friend suggested the following: 

Here was his advice:  Code!  Take a crash course on web development, then work freelance from home.  Tip: Learn Angular.js and React.js, as well as all the other stuff.

Then I go to Bill Myers site and see this: 

HTML and CSS are two languages that power most web sites. But these days, most sites are not manually built using HTML and CSS. Most are coded using a scripting language like PHP to write HTML and CSS pages.

But in order to use a scripting language to generate web pages, you need to know HTML and CSS, so I recommend learning HTML and CSS first, then going on to a scripting language after that.

An alternative path is to build web sites using WordPress, and then learn CSS, HTML and PHP to customize those sites.

There are many free online courses for HTML, CSS, PHP and WordPress. You'll find them with a google search.

As your son gets better with coding, he will want to have a Windows notebook so he can install his own server, php and SQL, to test programs offline. 

I use the free WAMP (web server, Apache, MySql, and PHP), to write and text web programs on my Windows computer without needing to be online. http://www.wampserver.com/en/.  

So it looks like the scripting languages are what Dan's friend was talking about.  Not bad.