Dive Into Web Development: An Introduction

Learning anything new from scratch is a daunting task; especially if you know little about the task at hand. This difficulty is only amplified if you have no one to turn to for advice or a helping hand. This is the exact feeling I got when I thought about trying to learn how to design and develop web pages and web applications. If it was not for the help and encouragement of some of my friend on this site I would have been much more reluctant to approach the task. Hopefully we can extend that same helping hand to those who need it and stumble upon our site.

Web development is an overwhelming topic considering the scope of task involved. As I have staggered through the process of learning web development, I have learned a bit about database administration, Linux operation, web server management, networking, visual design and color, image design and editing, and several programming languages including PHP, JavaScript, Perl, Python, XHTML, HTML, XML, and various forms of Flash. This is a lot of technology and information for a single person to study and master. However, the simple truth is that learning all this stuff is not hard. Simple by diving in and using the various technologies, you will quickly get a grasp of how the technologies work and how they interact. Now, to master these technologies is difficult as the subtleties can be complicated to fully understand. Once again, hopefully we here at OCDevel can help you in both areas.

So, you might be asking why go through all of the effort to learn Web Development? The short answer is the internet is the communication and interaction tool of today and tomorrow. More and more applications are moving to online environments completely, and many others have significant online components. Everyday, greater quantities of data and information are being digitized. Communication and data transfer is optimized by and for the internet, due to cross platform accessibility and rapid access and dispersion. While high performance desktop computers will always be a necessity for large scale application demanding heavy CPU power, GPU strength and large quantities of memory, the cheaper “client” computers of days gone by will continue to make a with the increased popularity of the internet. Many home computers are just low performance mini computers used to browse email and the internet, using the web itself as a server to do word processing and data processing. This is occurring because web is optimal for common everyday uses such as communication, document transfer, data access, information collection and various other miscellaneous tasks centered on accessing databases and transferring information.

This series will be a brief introduction to web development. It will introduce you to a lot of the key concepts and how to start understand and using most of the necessary technologies. I decided to write this series because I am currently venturing down this learning path to web development. Consequently, I can share the experience of delving into the technology first hand, and tell you what did and didn’t work for me. In addition, if you are going through the same process or have recently, you can leave both helpful comments and questions. This will allow the whole process to be a more effective learning experience. I hope someone of you finds this series useful.