In 2001 we had to choose some additional courses in school. One of them was "Webseiten mit HTML gestalten".
We learned everything from scratch. If there were syntax highlighters already? We didnt know. Just notepad and the keyboard. One of my classmates and i did such a good job that our teacher began to convince small local businesses that we can build their "online businesscard". Thinking about it even then i was more interested in the technical aspect. Design never was my thing and still isn't.