I am a programmer - junior as CS in college - I know html and css very well due to my job (in additon to C# and other knowledge) - but I have little to no idea on how to create my own "website"
Buy a domain at any registrar . . .
Buy hosting from some place like hostgator (even for a month just to play around with it). When you purchase your hosting set your primary domain to the domain you purchased.
At your domain registrar point(chanage) the A record to your hostgator hosting IP address this is in the cpanel DNS.
Create a simple html page, name is index.html
Now FTP your html and css in to the public_html folder on your hostgator hosting.
So enter your domain in a browser and it should display your html page you uploaded.
It might take some time for the DNS to resolve but usually it's ready pretty fast.
Now you have your feet wet with setting up a basic website you can look in to hosting a MEAN stack. For that I'd recommend hosting on Digital Ocean.
Another recommendation is to connect with classmates already doing this stuff. They can make recommendations and give you some one on one assistance.
2. Get hosting (Sometimes 1 & 2 are through the same company but don't have to be)
3. Point your domain to your hosting via updating forms at your domain name provider/hosting provider (if 1 & 2 aren't from the same company)
4. FTP your html and css etc up to the www directory on your hosting provider
5. Check it all works, fix stuff that doesn't.