Ask HN: Looking for an overview of web application development

I am interested in web development.

There seem to be a lot of languages involved. I am finding the abundance of options confusing. Searching the web mostly revealed strong opinions about the author's platform of choice without convincing analysis.

Can anyone direct me to a book or site which describes the overall web framework and discusses the merits of competing options? I need something that breaks down how websites are served and what type of operations are performed on the client vs the server.

I tried to figure out how websites I liked were built. They tended to list various stacks. The variations convinced me that many roads lead to Rome, but left me without a map of the various paths.

Background: I have built desktop applications in java and common lisp. I find lisp more enjoyable, and would prefer to work in a lisp style. However, I recognize that a flexible approach may be required. I took a class in Ruby on Rails several years ago, but it was rather poorly taught. I have played around with html and css.

Endstate: I would like to be able to produce a site with capabilities similar to smartsheet.

wappalyzer is very cool thanks for the tip.

I realize I won't be building Smartsheet anytime soon, but I want to start learning the tools with enough power to get me there.

I do plan to "Start with PHP, Rails or Node and build stuff," but first I would like to have a broad understanding of the frontend to backend path you describe. I know nothing of this process. I am looking for the basic concepts. In some ways, I feel like I'm trying to take derivatives with a fuzzy understanding of algebra. Following the book's example can get you from x^n to n*x^(n-1), but not to understanding.

Here is an overview I wrote. This is based on a lot of conversations and emails to non-technical startup people who wanted to learn a bit about the tech. This same material was also given as a talk at Wharton's Venture Initiation Program. Some beginning programs have told me they found it useful also:

http://illuminatedcomputing.com/posts/2014/03/basics-of-web-...

Note there are a few "lies" for the sake of simplifying, and some comments are a little dated, but hopefully it is helpful for you!

EDIT: Let me add, if you're wondering about what language & framework to choose, my advice is it doesn't matter too much, so don't spend much time on this decision. Go with your taste/enjoyment and dive in. You can't make a good choice from reading other people's generalities, so don't try. My preference is Rails, but tastes differ. (I will offer my own generalities though: Rails is best at rapid development and adaptability, Python is best at stats/machine learning, and I'd don't know what Java & C# are best at. For "best at safety/correctness" maybe I'd choose Haskell. :-)

The link is a nice writeup.