Web development concepts in layman’s terms

Ndero John
Jul 21, 2017 · 5 min read

I used to wonder about web development. Things like how do people build a web app? Who is this guy called HTML? Why is he always accompanied by his sister CSS? And what are these things called web frame works? I would research more on these terms and in the process come across other terms like DNS, servers, clients, HTTPS and so on. Eventually I gave up and decided they were beyond my understanding.

If you think that you need to have a masters in computer science, have a solid foundation in mathematics and a crippled social life in order to be a web developer, you’re in the right place.

Lately I have had the opportunity to be in Andela’s bootcamp and get all my esoteric perception of web development turned around. I have learnt that if you want to be a web developer you just need to dive straight into it without caring about your background knowledge. I have also observed that software development is a social activity. The apps are all about human beings. They touch our daily life be it in social networks, banking, shopping or travelling. They help us connect with each other and to services. And while in the process of web development, you collaborate with other developers to build a final product, building healthy relationships in the process and acquiring excellent communication skills. Am already getting ahead of myself but basically this article is dedicated to explaining web development in layman’s terms for all tech enthusiastic out there. If you think that you need to have a masters in computer science, have a solid foundation in mathematics and a crippled social life in order to be a web developer, you’re in the right place.

Here is an analogy to help open your mind on web development. Let’s build a house. First, we require some land on which to build our house, building materials and construction tools. We might also need a kind of a proof, after building the house, showing that the house is legally ours — in case someone else comes claiming that the house is theirs. Unfortunately we don’t have any of these, but our friend Andrew has both the land and the money to buy the materials. The only thing he lacks is builders. Seeing that we are a big team, we sign a deal with him and start working. He has laid out a detailed structure of how he wants his house to look like and given a deadline to when he want his house completed. Just as we are laying the foundation, we get information that there are vendors who are selling skeletons for the wooden houses. That will save us a lot of time and enable us to beat the deadline. We buy the skeleton and start fitting the materials in place. Andrew is also around, checking our progress as many times as he can. If we add a feature he doesn’t like he gives feedback and asks us to redo it, otherwise he gives us a go ahead. We are a big team working on this house there has to be a way of making sure everyone is on the same page. Once we finish the inside frame, we need to do some interior design and exterior design too. These two are to be done in stages. The first stage is adding the interior features and the second stage is customizing them to Andrew’s expectation. After a lot of feedback, acting on the feedback and seeking clarification, we eventually build the house to Andrew’s expectation. He in turn obtains a deed for his house and rents it out to tenants.

Back to the software world now. The house we want to build is the web app. Our team of builders is the software development team. Andrew is our client. A client is the individual or company that wants an app built for them. The skeleton is the web framework. Think of a web framework as an interface or a skeleton containing the main frame that allows you to build your app upon it instead of starting from a scratch thus saving you time. Examples of web frameworks include Flask, Django, React.js and Ruby on Rails. The materials we fill on the skeleton are the app’s features. These are normally described in details by the client. The users, these are Andrew’s tenants, however need not know the ‘complicated’ details of the app. Instead, we provide them with a fancy interface filled with beautiful graphics that they use to interact with the core working. This graphical interface is akin to the interior and exterior design of a house. The guys used to implement the graphical interface are HTML and CSS. Think of the first stage design as the HTML which displays somewhat plain features. CSS is the second stage that customizes the interface and make it more beautiful. There exists CSS frameworks too. Think of these frameworks as a skeleton, not for the house now but for the second stage interior design. One such framework is called bootstrap which is handy for something called responsive web design — a topic for another day. There are several means for web development teams and their clients to stay on the same page just we did while building the house. One such way is Github. Think of Github as a container which allow developers to keep track of each other’s changes and collaborate on the same project/app. Once the app is built, a license is obtained as a proof of its ownership. The license is like the deed in our analogy. One of the popular licenses is the GNU license, which is used to license open source apps. Open source means that any user of the app can modify it, share it with anyone as long as she/he gives the ones he is sharing with the same freedom to modify and share.

And that is it. Web development in a nutshell. Start here, make small steps and surprise yourself. You have an ‘added’ advantage, over seasoned web developers, in that the web development ecosystem keeps changing. Everyone has to adapt and keep up with the pace. If you’re the kind of a person that derives fun from continuously learning new things, try web development. If you are a tech enthusiastic, web development will be cool. And most importantly, if you can understand the logic of building a house or better still build one then you can be a web developer.



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