ID Your HTML Headings (Musical/Luhrmann Edition)

My version of “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen”… HTML edition… or at least it starts with HTML, then it quickly goes to other unrelated topics 😅

In 1997, the Chicago Tribune published “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” (also known as “Wear Sunscreen”). A half-humorous, half-serious column by Mary Schmich that was later versioned by Baz Luhrmann –yes, the director of movies like Rome+Juliet, Moulin Rouge, or Elvis– in his hit “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen” (see video below).

Recently, a web developer I follow on Mastodon wrote her own version of the song as a tribute to CSS and Web development for fun. That inspired me to write my own version about a common mistake I see many developers make: not adding the id attribute to the headings in web pages and articles. Of course, my version quickly went on to other unrelated things.

Here’s the video for Baz Luhrmann’s song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

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And here’s my web development version.

ID Your (HTML) Headings

Front-End and Back-End Developers of the class of ‘24:
ID your Headings.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, ID’ing headings would be it.
A long-term benefit of ID’ing headings has been proved by browsers,
whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
than my own development experience, I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of HTML and CSS, oh, never mind!
You will not understand the power and beauty of HTML and CSS
until AI makes them unnecessary, but trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back
at projects you’ve done and recall in a way you can’t grasp now
how much possibility lay before you, and how much excessive JS you used.
HTML and CSS are not as basic as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the bugs.
Or worry, but know that worrying
is as efficient as trying to solve addition using 8GB of node_modules.
The real bugs in your work life
are apt to be user requests that never crossed your worried mind.
The kind that blindsides you at 4:55 p.m. on a long weekend’s Friday.
Read one thing every week about a technology you don’t use.

Saying, don’t be reckless with other people’s technology choices
Don’t put up with people who are reckless with your technology choices

Learn.

Don’t waste your time on office drama.
Sometimes you’re correct, sometimes you’re incorrect.
Your development career is long and in the end, it’s up to you.
Remember good end-of-year reviews you receive, learn from the bad ones.
If you succeed in doing this, you’ll go far.
Keep your coworker connections, stop following dev grifters.

Run accessibility tests.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t share enough development things online.
The most interesting developers I know
don’t have time to post on social media or go to conferences.
Some of the most knowledgeable ones aren’t even on social media!
Get away from the keyboard.
Enjoy walks outside in sunny days,
you’ll miss them when you can’t.

Maybe you’ll use Vue, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll use React, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll try Ember, maybe you’ll program using jQuery
in a mom-and-pop store website.
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much,
or beat yourself about it either.
Your stack choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy coding, use it every way you can.
Don’t be afraid of the language or what other people think of it.
Coding is the greatest instrument you’ll ever know.
Build something, even if all you have is an old PC with no RAM.
Read the documentation even if you don’t follow it.
Do not listen to dev influencers, they will only make you feel useless.

Get to know that library, you never know when it’ll be deprecated.
Be nice to HTML, CSS, and vanilla JS, they’re the root of basics
and the most likely to stick with you when you change frameworks.

Understand that jobs come and go,
but a few precious coworkers, you should hold on to.

Work hard to learn who does what on other teams.
For as you advance in your career
the more you’ll need the people you knew when you were learning.
Style a project with CSS once but stop before it makes you hard.
Style a project with Tailwind once but stop before it makes you soft.

Read the README.

Accept certain inalienable development truths:
stacks will change, managers will lie, you too, will get to be a senior,
And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were a junior
stacks were simpler, managers were more trustworthy,
and juniors respected their seniors.

Listen to the seniors.

Don’t expect management to carve your career.
Maybe you have a great boss, maybe you’ll have a smart skip,
but you never know when the next reorg will happen.

Don’t change frameworks and libraries constantly,
or by the time you’re 40 you’ll know nothing.

Beware of coder’s advice you buy and dig deeper into those who supply it.
Those posts are like code salads, they find ways of fishing other’s work,
resharing it like it’s their own, removing attribution, redesigning it,
and reposting, reposting, and reposting.

But trust me on ID’ing your headings.

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I hope you enjoyed this silly parody. Now seriously, please, please, please, please, please, please: add the id attribute to your headings. It helps people who share your website online to deep link directly to the critical content.