A Definitive Guide For Web Development

“Doing what you love the most, certainly leads you towards excellence”

While surfing through different websites, most often you might have wondered how the stuff works or might have heard the terms like front-end development, back-end development, but never got familiar with them. With billions of websites out there, web development is among the most popular and trending jobs today. So, if you want to get started with web development and get the idea of how things function or want to be an aspiring web developer, we are here to help you out with this.

So, now it’s time to roll in towards the goal…

How do web applications work?

Before diving into the tools and technologies required, we first need to understand the working of a web app. Whenever you type in some URL in your web browser or open any website, it nearly takes just blink for your eye to get the requested site loaded in the browser. So, how does all this happen?

Let’s try to grab these concepts with an example of Facebook. When you try to login to your account you act as a client to them. You enter your email id and password and hit the login button. The browser then sends a request to the Facebook servers to check the credentials and let you log in to your account.

On the server, the credentials you entered are checked, that if the email id and password you provided are correct or not. This data (email id, password and much more) of all the users is stored in what is known as the database. From the database, the credentials are matched and the server then sends a response to the browser whether the information entered is correct or not. The browser interprets the response and gives the result to you (client).

Working of Web App

Thus, a web application mainly consists of the following layers:

1. Front-End Web Development, which is simply what you see and interact with on any website while navigating on the Internet.
2. Back-End Web Development, it includes the server to which the calls are made whenever you do some operation on the website, like clicking on a button.
3. Database, where all the data are meant to be stored and manipulation on data can be done.

So, now as you’ve understood the working of the browser, let’s dive deep into the layers of a web application and the tools and technologies required for them.

Front-End Web Development

The front-end of the web application is simply what you see on the website. It is the visible part of the website or web application that is responsible for user experience. The user directly interacts with the front end portion of the web application or website. From fonts and colors to dropdown menus and sliders, is a combo of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript being controlled by your computer’s browser.

A front-end dev is responsible for the interior design of a house that’s been built by a back-end dev.

Now, let’s see the languages and tools required for front-end development.

Skills and Languages

1. HTML: stands for HyperText Markup Language and is generally the cornerstone for all the webpages you see today. It defines elements on a webpage and tells browsers what to display, how to display it, and where.
2. CSS: Cascading Style Sheets, is a simple design language. Using CSS, you can control the style of fonts, how columns are sized, layouts are designed, variations in display for different devices and screen sizes as well as a variety of other effects.
3. Javascript: It is responsible for all the changes or dynamicity that occurs on a webpage. Its implementation allows a client-side script to interact with the user and make dynamic pages.

In simple words, you can say that HTML acts as the skeleton of the body of a webpage. CSS is a dress that beautifies it and makes it look attractive and JS is responsible for the movement and actions of the body of the webpage.

Front-End Frameworks and Libraries

A software framework is a pre-written app structure for you to build on top of. There are numerous Front-End Frameworks and a lot more are added in the following list of these frameworks on a daily basis. but the most popular of them are listed below :

1. Angular: This Javascript framework is basically used to build a Single Page Application (SPA) i.e. once the website is loaded in the browser it does not need to load any of its pages again. It is written in Typescript, which is a more strictly typed version of javascript.
2. React: It is a declarative, efficient, and flexible Javascript library for building user interfaces. It lets you compose complex UIs from small and isolated pieces of code called “components”. Basically, it is used to build a Single Page Application.
3. Bootstrap: It makes any website responsive very effortlessly on fingertips. It is the most popular CSS framework for developing responsive, mobile-first web sites.

Resources

Now, the question is how and where to learn these languages?

• W3schools is a favored website for learning HTML, CSS and other languages. It helps you to learn many different topics in a short and handy way.
• One can get the learning of Javascript from root to advance by referring to MDN Web Docs.
• Official documentation renders the best coding architecture and best practices for the following framework, mentioned here are Angular, React, Bootstrap, etc.
• Also, you can touch on to Udemy courses for Angular, React and various other frameworks.

Back-End Web Development

So what makes the front end of a website possible? Where is all that data stored? This is where the back end comes in.

It refers to the server-side development of web applications or websites with a primary focus on how the website works. Back-end development languages handle the ‘behind-the-scenes’ functionality of web applications.

It’s the code that connects the web to a database, manages user connections, and powers the web application itself. Anything you can’t see easily with the eye such as databases and servers is the work of a back-end developer.

“I’ve always preferred back-end development because I love manipulating data,” said long-time back-end developer JP Toto.

Skills and Languages

1. Java — It is one of the most popular and widely used programming languages and platforms. It is highly scalable. It is used in frameworks like Spring.
2. Python — It’s a programming language that lets you work quickly and integrate systems more efficiently.
3. JavaScript — It has numerous diversified frameworks, hence, it can be used as both (front end and back end) programming languages.
4. C# — The C# language is the preferred architecture for backend programming and automation in Windows environments.

Back-End Frameworks

Same as in Front-End Frameworks, there are various of Back-End Frameworks that can efficiently act as server-side. Conventional ones are mentioned below:

1. Django: It is a Python-based free and open-source web framework, with a primary goal to ease the creation of complex, database-driven websites. Some popular sites that use Django are Instagram, Mozilla, Bitbucket, etc.
2. ASP.NET: ASP.NET is a free, cross-platform, open-source developer platform for building many different types of applications. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build for web, mobile, gaming, and IoT. You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.
3. NodeJs: It is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side and networking applications. It also provides a rich library of various JavaScript modules which simplifies the development of web applications to a great extent. It is often used for real-time applications such as chat, news feeds, and web push notifications, used by popular startups like Netflix, Uber, Walmart, LinkedIn, etc.
4. Spring Boot: Level up your Java code, With Spring Boot in your app, just a few lines of code is all you need to start building services like a boss.

Resources

Let’s get on to, from where to learn these things,

• To get started with Django you can go through the official documentation, this would surely guide from scratch to advanced.
• For .Net go through these following links:

ASP.NET Web API — ASP.NET 4.x

ASP.NET MVC Pattern

• Official Documentation of Node JS is absolute, you can make this more minimal and flexible by using a framework of the framework (Node.js) know as Express JS.
• See Tutorialspoint Nodejs and run the simple code to gain some confidence at using Expressjs.

Databases

Every modern web application leverages one or more databases to store information. Databases provide ways of defining your data structures, inserting new data, finding existing data, updating or deleting existing data, performing computations across the data, and more.

For example, the database of Facebook contains the information of all its users, from their login credentials to the posts they share or like daily.

They are major of two varieties, SQL and NO-SQL, elaborated below,

1. SQL: Stands for Structured Query Language. These databases are also called relational databases as they use relations to store the data.SQL databases are table based and have a predefined structure. With this type of database, the loads on the servers can be increased by increasing components like RAM, SSD or CPU. Some examples of such databases are MySQL, Oracle, SQLite, Postgres, and MS-SQL.
2. NO-SQL: The term ‘NoSQL’ means ‘non-relational’. It means that these databases aren’t based on the table-like relational database structure but provides a different mechanism for storage and retrieval of data. They are document-based and have a dynamic structure. Some examples of such databases are MongoDB, Aerospike, Redies, and Cassandra.

Full Stack Development

There’s often not a black-and-white distinction between front-end and back-end development. “Front-end developers often need to learn those additional back-end skills, and vice versa, especially in the current economy where marketing is thinly resourced,” said Matranga. “Developers need some of that cross-discipline. Oftentimes, you have to be a generalist.”

Full stack developers are jacks-of-all-trades.

It refers to the development of both front end(client-side) and back end(server-side) portions of the web application. Full-stack web developers have the ability to design complete web applications and websites. They work on the frontend, backend, database and debugging of web applications or websites. Popular stacks nowadays are:

• MEAN Stack: MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, and Node.js.
• MERN Stack: MongoDB, Express, ReactJS, and Node.js.

Domain Name and Hosting

Once you have learned the basics and have built your first website, naturally you want to make it available to the world. Again, in the interest of saving you hours of research, here are listed some links,

• Learning purposes can be fully filled with the help of Heroku.
• For Domain name, Godaddy, Namecheap is preferable.
• For Hosting, AWS, DigitalOcean is superior and has elaborative documentation that would help you build production easily.

Okay, so now you might have got the idea of how web applications work and what are the latest and trending tools for web development. So, now you can decide where you want to start off and explore the field of web development. Either you can choose front-end development or back-end development or even full-stack which includes both of them. The only thing you need to get all this done is patience and dedication.

Some helpful Ingredients

1. Git: Git is one of the most popular version control systems among developers. It is designed for coordinating work among programmers, but it can be used to track changes in any set of files. Its goals include speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.
2. Stackoverflow — Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers. You can find solutions to most of your problems through existing answers or even ask your question directly or help others by solving their doubts.
3. Text Editors — Use popular text editors like VS Code, Sublime Text, Atom, to take help in the development process. These editors include features like debugging, auto-completion, syntax highlighting and inbuilt Git control.
4. Style Guides: There are preferred style guides, Code Structures and best practices for every language, that makes your application more efficient and optimized.

The Bottom Line

Web development has many faces. But no matter the type of development you’re thinking of pursuing, soft skills like attention to detail, ability to learn quickly, ability to solve problems efficiently, and strong communication will stand you in good stead on top of the hard skills outlined above.

Happily, there’s never been a better time to pursue a career in web development. Employment of web developers is projected to grow 27 percent over the 10-year span from 2014 to 2024, faster than the average for all occupations.