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Web Application Development

Below is a playlist with some of my tutorials on building web applications. They just provide an overview of the field, which is vast and constantly expanding at breakneck speed. For this course, I highly recommend you choose one platform early on and simply focus on learning that platform, and all its associated modules/plugins/etc that you need, while ignoring the rest of the world. Focus on building your webapp.

Resources

The site hotframeworks.com lists the top web frameworks.

For this class, the frameworks I am recommending to students new to web app development are:

  • Single Page Applications (SPAs) use Angular, React , or Vue for the frontend , and the backend is typically in Express and probably with MongoDB as the database. Other backends are possible, including hosted ones at Firebase or AWS Amplify.
  • django - Python. Good for traditional webapps, but can also be a backend using Django REST framework.
  • Redwood - is a full-stack web framework designed to help you grow from side project to startup.
  • meteor - Javascript. Good for real-time updating of the client page (uses websockets).
  • Google App Engine - python or Java or Go
  • laravel - PHP
  • ASP.NET MVC, but only if everyone has a Windows laptop. C#

Note that react and Angular are front-end-only (UI) frameworks. You can usually use them along with the frameworks above which are back-end/full-stack frameworks.

Last update: July 28, 2023