Web Development From Scratch - An Intro

 My last college exam was on 4th June 2020. The very next day I felt as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, I was a free bird. 

Little did I expect, that this newfound freedom in the lockdown would soon turn to boredom. And this boredom would exert more pressure on me than my seemingly expansive college exams.

As I began to grow restless my father came up with the requirement of a website for his coaching institute. I had a vague idea about coding, I was averse to it. Still, all that free time got me studying.

 Upon reading, it turned out that web development is an offshoot of traditional software development focusing on an environment that runs solely on your browser. I became interested and started learning more about it.

Web Development is divided into two parts-

1. Front-End Development

2. Back-End Development

Front-End refers to the interactive and catchy part of the website/app that a developer creates, this includes the wireframe ie the whole outline or the setup of the webpage, the color scheme, the sizing, and proportioning of various buttons and fonts, their placements and positions, etc. 

Front-End is essentially the part that the user interacts with and everything he sees, I learn it should be made with ease of use in mind and creativity of expression to show the uniqueness of each website.

This also means if you want to become a full-stack developer, it will be easier for the person if he can visualize and start building the Front-End of his app first.

There are 3 main learning objectives that make up the fundamentals of Front-End development.

These are:-

1. HTML- HyperText Markup Langauge

2. CSS- Cascading Style Sheets

3. Javascript

HTML can be termed as the formating tool of the text inside the body of the webpage. All text written on a website is written in HTML tags.

CSS is mainly used to add effects and further provide a muscular structure to the skeleton that is HTML. CSS applies to HTML elements by linking these elements to the CSS methods which provide the desired effect.

Javascript is where the magic happens or as developers would say where the logic happens. Using various methods built into the language and using operators along with if-else statements complex arguments can be made to bring about phenomenal changes in the appearances and interactiveness of the website. It is the nervous system to the nervous system that is CSS.

However modern-day web developers do not compile thousands of lines of code each time they want the desired effect. For these purposes, there are libraries and frameworks which are compiled works of code already written ie ready to use.

The most popular Javascript libraries and frameworks are React.Js, Angular.Js, Vue.Js, etc.

Libraries and Frameworks are a vast collection of code. They make the life of Front-End developers very simple by holding down various methods(functionalities of certain code) and making them available with simple commands thereby saving them a lot of time and effort.

After the User Interface has been set up, the functionality of the links and buttons has to be thought of.

This is the work of a Back-End Developer. Which is a story for another post.

Cheers

Sarthak