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Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

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Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please could you inform me how you would build a form that creates, lets say a secondary loan for a company with attached assets. The assets could be zero, or many. How would you create this form without Javascript? Would you require a user to create the assets before the loan? Saying that HTML provides everything a developer needs to provide an application to client is so ridiculous, I have no idea why this sentimen…

> the moment you go enterprise, more is needed. If you're employed, working at scale and need to do the complicated stuff, you're not a beginner web developer anymore. At that point, you should already understand the fundamentals and start extending on top of that.

Precisely. Good observation.

Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#92
It's ok if you have observations, considerations, criticism and questions about both the curriculum and the method. But if you consider it outright bad for teaching someone web development, like some commeners did, then why don't you consider it a provocation and build your own web development course and show how it can be done better?

Anyway, it's free and you are not forced to follow the course. You can extract bits you think might be useful.

Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#93
post #66

about JavaScript, CSS, and HTML basics ...and this is where it goes off the rails; teaching JS before HTML is how we will continue to have the ridiculous proliferation of app-sites that shouldn't require a single line of JS instead needing the latest version of $browser (you have a choice of browser - pick one ...) to even show any content at all. Forms don't need any JS to work, yet the impression this gives to begi…

This view that you don’t need JS and can do most things natively is tired and screams of old timers trying to cling on to the past, when web pages didn’t have rich user interactions and good UX. Sure, you can build forms that perform full page refreshes, but ajax requests offer a better user experience.

I consistently have a more pleasant time with the well-designed, minimal JS websites (which are now a rarity) than even the better designed websites which heavily use JS. And my job is allegedly to 'improve' the internet with more JS.

Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#94
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would make multiple form, and track state on the server side (user createdvempty/wip loan, user added assets, user reviewed and confirm loan). Probably share state between client and server via a session token (cookie). Optionally share some state via REST - eg loan ID and asset IDs in path). That said - complex forms is a typical example of when you might want to move from a web "page" to an "app".

Share state? I disagree heavily. There is no reason for the backend to know how many assets a user is trying to add to a loan, or delete, or accidentally load, or add but realize mid-way that it doesn't apply. Do you belive the backend should know about human incorrect input and track state? What if a cat steps on a keyboard? every addition to a form is a page reload and a query to the server. then the server sends a…

You need to share state. You might only store finished loan applications server side, but often it's nice to allow a user to pick up where they left off. Or keep a list of started, not finished applications, to hand over to sales. Etc.

But sure, application state might not go in the same db/schema as completed transactions.

Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#95
post #79
post #67

It's good that they jump in with JavaScript right from the start. This way people learn right away that HTML/CSS are just helper technologies in the whole process of creating Web apps.

hello sir, how do I create webapp without html/css, thank you

You don't, but they don't carry any business logic.

Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#96
post #90
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I teach that kind of stuff at university — I would never think about teaching JS before HTML and CSS. Students should understand what ia possible with HTML and CSS alone. Then we look at the server side, and understand infrastructure and how servers can potentially deliver different HTML and CSS depending on the request and then we start introducing JS as a means to replace serverside stuff, to enrich HTNL and CSS or…

I am trying to finally learn what's going on in the web browser and my biggest hurdle has been CSS. I can read & write rules but the questions are really, which rules and under what circumstances? That plus the different layouts (grid, FlexBox, etc. -- terminology almost certainly wrong, sorry!). Can you please recommend a good resource for learning CSS & layouts?

Maybe too lightweight for your liking, but these helped me get my head around grid and flexbox:

https://cssgridgarden.com/

https://flexboxfroggy.com/

Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#97
post #90
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I teach that kind of stuff at university — I would never think about teaching JS before HTML and CSS. Students should understand what ia possible with HTML and CSS alone. Then we look at the server side, and understand infrastructure and how servers can potentially deliver different HTML and CSS depending on the request and then we start introducing JS as a means to replace serverside stuff, to enrich HTNL and CSS or…

I am trying to finally learn what's going on in the web browser and my biggest hurdle has been CSS. I can read & write rules but the questions are really, which rules and under what circumstances? That plus the different layouts (grid, FlexBox, etc. -- terminology almost certainly wrong, sorry!). Can you please recommend a good resource for learning CSS & layouts?

Come on now! You must be overcomplicating things if you are having challenges digesting CSS. Cascading Style Sheets are probably the easiest thing to comprehend on the frontend.

Team Treehouse is a great resource for learning frontend and backend stuff.

Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#98
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Share state? I disagree heavily. There is no reason for the backend to know how many assets a user is trying to add to a loan, or delete, or accidentally load, or add but realize mid-way that it doesn't apply. Do you belive the backend should know about human incorrect input and track state? What if a cat steps on a keyboard? every addition to a form is a page reload and a query to the server. then the server sends a…

You need to share state. You might only store finished loan applications server side, but often it's nice to allow a user to pick up where they left off. Or keep a list of started, not finished applications, to hand over to sales. Etc. But sure, application state might not go in the same db/schema as completed transactions.

Seems like a pretty good place for the browser and JS to step in? unless you want a DB full of application_partial tables?

Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#99
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am trying to finally learn what's going on in the web browser and my biggest hurdle has been CSS. I can read & write rules but the questions are really, which rules and under what circumstances? That plus the different layouts (grid, FlexBox, etc. -- terminology almost certainly wrong, sorry!). Can you please recommend a good resource for learning CSS & layouts?

Come on now! You must be overcomplicating things if you are having challenges digesting CSS. Cascading Style Sheets are probably the easiest thing to comprehend on the frontend. Team Treehouse is a great resource for learning frontend and backend stuff.

How do you center an image on the screen, both on desktop and mobile ?

Like every other aspect of programming, there are multiple answers to this.

So I think it's a valid concern

Re: Web Development for Beginners – A Curriculum

#100

about JavaScript, CSS, and HTML basics ...and this is where it goes off the rails; teaching JS before HTML is how we will continue to have the ridiculous proliferation of app-sites that shouldn't require a single line of JS instead needing the latest version of $browser (you have a choice of browser - pick one ...) to even show any content at all. Forms don't need any JS to work, yet the impression this gives to begi…

If one wishes to teach web development, one teaches JavaScript. That's the end of the story.
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