Camp 1 · Step 1 of 14
What is HTML?
The language every web page is written in — and why it's the friendliest possible starting point.
Every website you have ever visited — every shop, game, news page, and this very lesson — is built on HTML. It's not a programming language in the "logic and loops" sense; it's a markup language: a way of labeling content so a browser knows what everything is.
Marking up meaning
Imagine handing a friend a plain text file of your favorite recipe and asking them to read it aloud as a web page. You'd need to tell them: "this line is the title", "these are list items", "this word should be bold". HTML is exactly that — labels around content:
<h1>Grandma's Pancakes</h1>
<p>The <strong>fluffiest</strong> pancakes in the world.</p><h1>says "top-level heading"<p>says "paragraph"<strong>says "this matters"
The browser reads the labels and renders accordingly. See for yourself — this playground shows a live preview that updates as you type:
HTML, CSS, JavaScript
| Layer | Job |
|---|---|
| HTML | what things are (structure) |
| CSS | what things look like (style) |
| JavaScript | what things do (behavior) |
HTML is the foundation the other two attach to — which is why nearly every web journey starts exactly here.
What does HTML primarily describe?
What's next
You'll build and preview your first complete page — live, right in the lesson.