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I've been searching for a long time to find a proper answer this question but couldn't found a satisfying one. Please note that I'm very unexperienced about programming/coding. I only have basic HTML/CSS knowledge. I'm trying to learn programming on online sites like codecademy, freecodecamp and etc. but so far, they seemed that they are only teaching the synthax of the languages and not to build your own project with on your own and in your own computer.

So, as a very beginner please guide me. What should I do? What I have to learn first and from where?

Thanks.

chronicpain
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  • You could learn some programming before. Read [SICP](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/) – Basile Starynkevitch Dec 25 '15 at 00:14
  • Thanks, but before jumping into the programming, first I'd like to draw my path and know where I'm going to. That's why I opened this thread. – chronicpain Dec 25 '15 at 00:21
  • What is a web project? For a basic website it is just a collection of text files containing CSS and HTML, so there is nothing more than learning how to write these files as the course you mention show. – Morgan Dec 25 '15 at 00:47
  • Nope, it's not a "basic website". I'm planing to build a kinda social network site, smilar to the blog sites like tumblr and blogger. In short, a complex and unique type of site. I hope it helps you to figure out what I'm asking. – chronicpain Dec 25 '15 at 00:57

1 Answers1

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Cool that you already have the HTML/CSS basic knowledge. Now you need to add some action to that to be able to build a web application.I assume that's your ultimate goal.

So any web application consists of 3 tiers (the simple ones),

enter image description here picture from www-igm.univ-mlv.fr

  1. browser (so the user can open your application)
  2. application server ( a machine having some software installed to process the user requests I am trying to make it so simple for you)
  3. database server to store the data and also you can query the data back from there.

Ok cool. so to build a web app you need to have the above 3 parts exist in your machine.

  1. You already have your own browser (Firefox, Chrome, IE, etc.)
  2. You need to have some kind of application server.
  3. You need to install any database server.

Ok let's talk about building the application,

To make things simple to build any web application you need to build 2 parts,

  • frontend ( what gets displayed for the user in his browser)
  • backend (Will be living inside the application server)

You already have the basic knowledge of HTML/CSS so I assume also you can create a form using html tags.

<form name="info" action="/submit" method="post" >
   <input type="text" id="firstName">
   <input type="text" id="lastName">
   <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

that's a simple form using html tags. (that's considered the frontend for your application.

Ok now we need to build the backend. to store the this data in the database.

the backend will reside in the application server tier. who will take care of executing it and responding back.

So in the form tag above we have this attribute action="/submit" the action is the url of the application that's going to receive the submitted form data. and then the code inside the application will read the data and then it will talk to the database and it will store it.

I hope that can give a basic picture about a simple web application.

If you don't have any knowledge of any programming language start with JavaScript for backend.

You can watch the podcast for a JavaScript framework called sailsJS I hope these videos will help you to build your web app,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlOolpwwGQg&list=PLf8i4fc0zJBzLhOe6FwHpGhBDgqwInJWZ

ahmed mahfouz
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