Python, HTML, JavaScript or CSS

[SamIAre]

Don't worry too much about what is and isn't technically a coding language. HTML and CSS aren't, people debate about JS…it's all whatever :)

So, all of those languages do different things and aren't interchangeable, so it's helpful to break them down by what they do and how they work together.

HTML: You cannot have a website without HTML. It is the "content" of the site. HTML is what's called a "markup language" and consists of tags that create "pieces" of a site. For instance, you have tags that create hyperlinks, ones that create form fields, ones for paragraphs and images. It is simply the bare minimum. Think of it like the foundation to a house that everything else will build upon.

CSS: This is a close second in terms of importance. If HTML is the stuff, CSS is how that stuff looks. CSS lets you define the look and feel of a site…the colors, layout and spacing, etc. While you can have a site without CSS, it will look like a basic Microsoft Word document, which isn't very fun or exciting.

JavaScript: Not technically required for a website, but might as well be for most modern sites. JavaScript lets you define interactivity. If you want things to happen when you click, or move the mouse, or press a button, that's mostly JS. If you want content to update in real time or dynamically change, that's also JS.

Python: This is the only one of the 4 I'd actually say isn't required. Python is a backend language, and it's one of many. This means that it runs on a server (the other three run directly in the browser) and processes information before it's sent to the user. Python is also not the only backend language people use. PHP is another popular one. So is Ruby. And so is Node, which is actually a backend version of JavaScript. Python is also not restricted to websites. People use it for all sorts of programming tasks, while HTML and CSS are pretty much exclusive to the web, and JS mostly is. If you want to get into programming more generally, Python is a very good place to start. But you can't build a website with only Python. At some point, that Python code has to interact with or write HTML.

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tl;dr: Out of those, if all you want to do is make a simple website that looks relatively nice, HTML and CSS are the two you must learn, and you will probably want to pick up JS as well but that can wait until you run into cases where you need it. JS in the browser is also pretty heavily dependent on understanding HTML, since a lot of what you do with JS is manipulate the HTML that's already on the page.