Maybe it's like the moon landing. You watch that old footage of people sitting in front of staticy TV sets and think, "wow, I bet that really blew their minds," all the while realizing that the year you were born they launched the second space shuttle. The idea that humans can explore space is natural.
Just so with the internet today. I remember when there was no internet, but more importantly I remember what discovering the internet felt like. There were no real rules, there was no road map, and while the technology was primitive compared to what we've got now, it was magical. The very idea of links held a power that's unimaginable - you can click on this, and it will take you...somewhere. Unless you knew the ins and outs of a browser or the basics of HTML (which, unless I'm way off base here, not that many people did in 1997), you were at the whims of the website, you went where it took you. There was no concept of a standard practice, you didn't expect anything in particular. You clicked, you typed, and you saw what happened. If all went well you were amazed.
These days we're hampered with ideas of best practices and have grown accustomed to the web's usual ebb and flow. You hover over a link, you submit a form, and there are preconceived notions of naturally what will follow from these actions, how the web will react to your contact with it. This obviously makes interaction easier, and it's a sign that the internet has become a user friendly and functional place to live, but the dynamic of exploration unencumbered by expectations is something that I miss the from those early days before there was a sense of expected website behavior.
Which is why, when I discovered event.preventDefault() I felt a certain ominous twinge. Default behavior is what allows things to work seamlessly, more quickly, more efficiently. It provides a baseline of experience and expectation, but when relied upon it also hampers creativity. The idea that a simple method could break out of that box of expectation, my mind expanded a little bit, and I was granted a new tiny sliver of perspective on the future.
Sometimes you're learning something, a language, an instrument, a dance (I assume), and amid the mind numbing processing of crushing minutia, one concept - one word, one technique - hits you, and you realize what's at stake, the possibilities inherent in the knowledge you're getting at. Learning JavaScript isn't just a way forward for me, I realized, it's a way back, a way sideways. Sure, for now it's the straight and narrow - you can't break the rules until you've learned them - but the road ahead will certainly veer off in many exciting directions.
