Ben Brooks:
Hacking away at stuff I don’t understand is how I got the skills and knowledge I have today. […]
The point of all this is that you should never be afraid to hack away at things. I still hack away at the CSS on this site, and while the site is live I save the change and see what happens. Maybe the entire site dies because of that, or maybe it doesn’t — I don’t care. I don’t care because I am working at learning and those few minutes of a broken site won’t really matter to anyone in the long run, but it will help me immensely.
When I first started this site, it was on Squarespace 5. I remember having to do a lot of hacking to get the site to look the way I wanted it to. I gained my first foothold in how to manipulate CSS during that time.
I didn't need to hack nearly as much on this site under Squarespace 6, and to be honest, I feel rough around the edges with what I'd be able to do in CSS these days.
But hacking doesn't have to be just on a website's code. I became a homeowner a little over a year ago, and that has been the ultimate hack. With each small or large issue that comes up with my home, I find myself doing a little research, and then trial and error.
We learn by hacking. Let's make mistakes.