As for now, we are a little bit familiar with the web. Now it’s time to understand what are the things required to get started with the web such as how the web works, what are the technologies/programming languages we need to learn, what is the difference between frontend and backend.
How the web works
When someone tries to access any website/data a number of different functionalities occur behind each access request:
- Client sends the request to the server
- Server responds to the client’s request
- Resultant page appears
When a client tries to access any web page or website then it means he’s trying to access an address/URL of any website which is obviously not on his local machine/computer. It means the client is trying to access the website/data from any other machine i.e. “server”. And as a result, the client will get a response from the server.
So, here we can conclude one thing, that a server is a machine that stores the websites, web apps, etc. and a client is a web user that accesses these sites from the server.
Frontend and Backend Development
The frontend is client-side while the backend is server-side of any site.
Frontend
When a user successfully accesses a website then everything he directly sees such as layout, design, or anything he interacts with refers to the frontend.
In frontend development, the most frequently utilized languages are “HTML”, “CSS”, and “JavaScript”. While the most frequently utilized frontend frameworks and libraries include “AngularJS”, “React.js”, and “jQuery”.
Backend
The backend is not directly accessible to the clients, it refers to anything behind the scenes. There are numerous languages and frameworks available for backend development.
In backend development, the most frequently used languages are “Java”, “PHP”, and “Python” while there are a number of frameworks available for backend development like “Django”, Node.js and “Laravel” etc.
Software and Tools
There are numerous software and tools available to get started with web development but choosing the most appropriate one is very important. In order to become a web developer, you can start your journey with two basic tools like a text editor to write your code and a web browser to show the output of your program.
Text editors
Text editors play a very crucial role while building any web application. The text editors provide some useful functionalities that help the developers in coding like detecting an error, auto-indentation, and many more. The details about a couple of well-known text editors are listed below:
Visual Studio Code
It is most commonly used editor for frontend development. It is developed by Microsoft and it is available for all operating systems i.e. windows, mac, and Linux.
- It is very popular among developers because it supports numerous programming languages such as CSS, JavaScript, python, flutter, etc.
- It supports many extensions like CSS Peek, live server, ESLinting, Auto Rename Tag, and many more.
- Furthermore, it offers many key features like highlighting the syntax, auto-completion, error detection, split-screen view, etc.
Sublime Text Editor
Sublime is a widely used user-friendly text editor available for all operating systems i.e. Mac, Linux, and windows. It offers many useful attributes.
- It provide fast navigation to lines, files, etc.
- It offers an auto-completion feature.
- The sublime text editor offers several features like sidebar, syntax highlight, etc.
There are many more text editors used for frontend development such as atom, notepad ++, etc.
While in order to display the output, developers use different browsers like Google chrome and edge.
Web Development Guide for Beginners
Now we are done with understanding the basics of the web, here we will discuss some points to remember while getting started with web development:
- Initially, you can’t create a professional website so build a small and simple site at the beginner level.
- While building a site, choose the most relevant tool and first plan what you are going to develop then write the code accordingly.
- HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are most frequently used to develop a site. HTML gives a primary structure of any site, CSS implements some style on it and JavaScript controls the behavior of HTML elements.
- We knew that a website is a collection of multiple files, so structure the files wisely.
Conclusion
The web is basically a combination of three things: websites/webpages, servers, and browsers that are connected with each other. Websites are the collection of different files, while the servers are the machines that store all the data of these sites, and browsers are ones that load the data to display it to the users.
In this article, we have learned what is web, how it works, what is web development, the difference between frontend and backend development, and what are the tools required to develop a site.
