Ask Slashdot: Tips For Designing a Modern Web Application?

There's quite a few options out there, but... by pushing-robot · 2012-06-02 11:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you're familiar with Java but not web development, it sounds like Grails might be a good place to start.

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Re:There's quite a few options out there, but... by jasenj1 · 2012-06-02 12:58 · Score: 4, Informative

I'll throw in a vote for Grails. It is a convention over configuration app framework that has you code your domain objects and then it generates CRUD pages for you.
The documentation is pretty good. There's lots of tags for the web page side.
It lives on top of Spring, Hibernate, & JQuery so it has some solid frameworks at its core.
It uses Groovy as its language rather than Java, but Groovy is 100% compatible with Java and is mostly syntactic shortcuts & convenience tricks on top of Java (like no need for semicolons). So it is very easy to learn if you're a Java guy; you can slowly start using more idiomatic Groovy while still writing very Java-esque code.
If Groovy scares you, try Roo (http://www.springsource.org/spring-roo). It's a pure Java based app framework also from Spring that uses the Spring libraries.
Now, having said all that. If you plan to deploy to iOS or Android, you may want to consider RhoMobile (http://rhomobile.com). It is a Ruby-on-Rails environment that runs on top of the native OS. So developing a RoR app for the client-server PC side and then porting to RhoMobile should be very easy. I don't know of a solution on the Java side that will take a Java servlet based app and move it over to the mobile OSes conveniently.
Re:There's quite a few options out there, but... by c0lo · 2012-06-02 13:01 · Score: 4, Informative

If you're familiar with Java but not web development,...
+

In the long term, writing a view-only version as an Apple and/or Android app is on the radar
+

I have no experience with PHP and would like to stay in my Java comfort zone as much as possible, but want to use the right tool.
In my opinion, give GWT a try. Why should make it exciting for you: the entirely dev cycle (this includes debug) is Java based - including the code in the "views" that will be shown in the browser (even if this code will be transpiled to javascript - a very compact one for the functionality it implements).
Using GWT, the "presentation logic" is totally separated by the lower layers (in both "architectural" and "exploitation" senses): i.e. your business logic will implement only "services" type of functions, the "presentation logic" - in browser - will be in charge to render the data the way you see fit - no more server-side resources to be consumed by layouting the page, applying "data model basic consistency validation", etc - (oh, how I hated JSP at their time). Let the "client CPU" do a bit of this effort - if your application will be highly used, a bit from every client-side that takes some care about itself will get you some serious server-side savings.
As I write, I'm digging into a piece of GWT that promises to take care of the integration with JPA entities, e.g. bringing Hibernate into the picture without the need of heaps of "plumbing code".

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Would anyone else recommend GWT? by WilliamBaughman · 2012-06-02 11:49 · Score: 3, Interesting

It's been a long time since I've used the Google Widget Toolkit, but it was an interesting shim between Java and WebApps. Would someone with more recent experience than mine please chime in and say whether it would be useful to the original poster?

Re:Would anyone else recommend GWT? by schlesinm · 2012-06-02 12:04 · Score: 3, Informative

GWT is decent if you are building a web application that will be doing one thing. If you are looking for a more broadscale application, then GWT doesn't hold up well.

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Re:Would anyone else recommend GWT? by Post-O-Matron · 2012-06-02 12:13 · Score: 5, Interesting

GWT is good if you want to create a RIA, when the presentation logic is so complex developing it in javascript is a nightmare, but without having to use Flash or silverlight. If the presentation is simple enough however, I would stick to HTML5 + jQuery. In fact the "simple enough" bar in that last statement is gradually pushed forward.
As a rule of thumb I'd say if you have a lot of moving parts on the page and you are basically creating a desktop application inside the browser ala Google docs, then consider GWT. Otherwise it will do more harm than good.
Re:Would anyone else recommend GWT? by SplashMyBandit · 2012-06-02 13:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

GWT is great if you want interactivity. Also fits in well since you are a Java programmer. I've also recently discovered vaadin (http://vaadin.com) which extends GWT and provides much nicer themes than the default. Best of all, all the tools you need for GWT/vaadin development are free (both zero cost and source is available); Java, Tomcat, Eclipse or Netbeans, GWT + GWT plugin (for debugging in your browser), vaadin and the all-important community documentation/forums (that is, you don't have to pay for a subscription like MSDN). Best of all vaadin/GWT handles almost all of the browser variation for you (although there are differences in CSS for advanced styling).
Since you are already a Java programmer I would say you'd be mad to go past GWT (which you also develop for, and can debug in Java). Other solutions are ok for static page-oriented viewing but for a complex dynamic site it is hard for a competent Java programmer to be more productive than with GWT (except for the smaller sites with not a lot going on). How do I know, well I use GWT daily - including building complex sites for managing medical information for our national-level health ministry.
Re:Would anyone else recommend GWT? by schlesinm · 2012-06-02 17:52 · Score: 2

That's a fairly broad statement, "GWT doesn't hold up well". I'm curious to see why you think this is the case - my (extensive) experience has been the opposite - GWT scales well and you can do stuff with it that is painful with other technologies (eg. works across just about every browser - even with braindead IE6's limitations; you can also development very modular and re-usable components with GWT). So yeah, I'm interested to hear what general-purpose solution you think is better than GWT and why.
Most of my experience with GWT was with pre-2.0. We had issues when trying to bring in stand-alone pages in addition to the web app we had. It was difficult to integrate existing non-GWT pages with GWT.

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Re:Would anyone else recommend GWT? by ByteSlicer · 2012-06-02 22:13 · Score: 2

No. The regulations are for tracking cookies. Cookies for normal operation (storing the state of the site) are still allowed without explicit permission from the user.

There's two parts by sribe · 2012-06-02 11:53 · Score: 2, Informative

For the client side, you want to use at least JQuery (& SASS & CoffeeScript), and learn about non-intrusive scripting. You may also want to investigate other libraries that layer on top of JQuery.

For the server side, the choice is less clear. I happen to like Rails--it was the first web app framework that felt even remotely "right" to me, but since then there's been a lot of development and a lot of cross-pollination of good ideas across languages/frameworks, such that there's now a number of choices that rate as "pretty damn good" in my opinion.

Re:There's two parts by ohnocitizen · 2012-06-02 12:41 · Score: 2

Coffeescript: When you want to debug in two languages. Seriously though, it ended up being a bit of a practical bother. If on the otherhand you try coffee and love it, you can use it with nodejs.
Re:There's two parts by Kergan · 2012-06-02 12:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

CoffeeScript... That way, when your console tells you you've a JS error on line X, you need to check the code output by CS, and locate whatever code you wrote that could have generated the relevant lines, all the while coping with the fact that CS doesn't cover 100% of JS, and introduces its own set of bugs and quirks on top of those in JS. Good luck with that in the long term.
Re:There's two parts by Jane+Q.+Public · 2012-06-02 14:27 · Score: 2

"Once you start integrating with devices and complex webservices then Rails is not as good a fit as something like Java."
Not so. In regard to devices, Rhodes is a cross-platform app development environment entirely built around Ruby and Rails. In fact, as far as I know, it is the only cross-platform mobile development system that has gained any popularity.

And as for web services, I have no idea where that assertion came from. That was really a rather odd statement to make. It is no more difficult to integrate with web services using Ruby and Rails than with any other language or framework. I should know; I do it all the time.

Ignore PHP by Osgeld · 2012-06-02 11:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

its the worst thing you could ever attempt to learn

Re:Ignore PHP by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-06-02 14:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

Because it's crap. See sig for details.
And It works so "well" for Facebook that they essentially had to re-implement it as a PHP-to-C++ translator just to get decent perf out of it.
Re:Ignore PHP by countach74 · 2012-06-02 14:27 · Score: 2

Curious, what's your preferred language for web dev? I have admired your sig for some time, as I couldn't agree more.
Re:Ignore PHP by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-06-02 15:30 · Score: 2

My preference would probably be ASP.NET MVC, but this is mainly because I'm more intimately familiar with C# than most other options, not because it is necessary the best choice. Really, there are too many good choices to list them all - Python and Ruby both have a slew of frameworks for all tastes, and Scala is also very enticing. Groovy is pretty decent, as well.
Re:Ignore PHP by PCM2 · 2012-06-02 15:40 · Score: 2

And Facebook isn't using the same PHP the OP will be using, either. Facebook developed its own compilers and other tools that allow its applications to scale in ways that stock PHP applications cannot.

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Re:Ignore PHP by Xest · 2012-06-03 03:29 · Score: 2

Personally I'd use ASP.NET MVC or something like Java and Spring if you don't want to go the Microsoft route.
I know others mentioned things like Grails which sit on top of things like Spring, but honestly my experience has always been that if you add yet another layer of abstraction, you're just creating more places for things to go wrong, and putting something else in your way when you start creating something that goes slightly beyond non-trivial such that you'll end up having to put forth ugly hacks to work round it. I haven't worked with Grails, so I can't say if this is the case for it, maybe it's the rare (unique?) exception, but to me the frameworks by themselves usually do the trick just fine, then you can also mix and match - chuck in jQuery and nHibernate if you want, or don't if you don't.
But honestly, if you're working in a Microsoft shop doing internal web apps, or self-hosted web apps where you have Microsoft hosting, then ASP.NET MVC is a breeze to work with, it's so painless, so easy to extend, and makes it so easy to make sure your site is secure, well tested etc. The more advanced language features of C# just add to this, so if you're comfortable with the contents of a book like C# in Depth, then you'll really be able to do some great stuff really quickly with it.
Re:Ignore PHP by horza · 2012-06-03 09:47 · Score: 2

You mean how awful it is that (integer) is a synonym for (int)? There are some points that we've known about for a long time, mixed in with a whole lot of fluff and irrelevance. It's true it is more painfully evolved rather than well developed, however I'm not particularly impressed with that article.
Phillip.

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Play framework (Java) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-02 11:58 · Score: 5, Informative

I just started playing around with the Play framework (Java/Scala) I'm loving it, and I'm coming from *gasp WebObjects, and .Net. I can't speak too much about its features but it's really simple to get up and running connected to a database and serving content, as well as creating REST api. Deployment is a single command.
This is what I'm using for a tutorial: https://github.com/jamesward/play2torial/blob/master/JAVA.md

Even more important by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-02 11:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

Forget PHP. The language has seen very little progress lately. But even that wouldn't matter, as PHP is slow and horrible. Very inconsistent as well, as the it's little more than glue between some libraries.

Re:Even more important by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-02 12:14 · Score: 2, Funny

Ghaaa! GHAAA!! I eat your face for saying "forget PHP".
PHP is superior.. I say this because you can do damn near anything in PHP. I can generate dynamic SVG in PHP, I can post dynamic encrypted AJAX-script in PHP, I can communicate with my server's serical port in PHP, I eat your face in PHP!!!
Nothing you can do in any language is superior to any other except for SIMPLICITY! The more human-readable the code is, the more PHP ZOMBIES EAT YOUR FACE OFF!!!
Re:Even more important by Kergan · 2012-06-02 12:36 · Score: 2

Yeah, you can do a lot of weird things, too.
$a = array('7.1'); var_dump(in_array('7.10', $a)); // true
http://www.phpwtf.org/
Re:Even more important by rev0lt · 2012-06-02 12:50 · Score: 2

The notion of "human readable" varies from human to human. I have a friend that *loves* haskell, but for me the code looks like a corrupted text file. On the other hand, I've identified and corrected errors in programs made with high-level languages from an assembly dump of the code. What I find simple and easy to read may not be that easy to you, or vice-versa.
Oh and I do work with PHP, and I hate the ambiguity of the code.
Re:Even more important by SplashMyBandit · 2012-06-02 13:34 · Score: 2

Whatever snake that can only live in one environment, kinda moves backwards, and is not very dynamic compared to other more recently evolved snakes :)
Re:Even more important by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-06-02 14:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

TL;DR version is that PHP is crap. For a lengthy treatment of the subject, see my sig.
Re:Even more important by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-06-02 16:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

If you didn't get so carried away by a rant of your own, you might have noticed that the linked article is not written by me. I do happen to agree with most of its points, however, and certainly with the overall conclusion.
Re:Even more important by Raenex · 2012-06-03 07:27 · Score: 2

But I can't imagine doing anything substantial with it.
Right. It would be unimaginable if sites like Facebook or Wikipedia were based on it.

CherryPy by elamdaly · 2012-06-02 12:00 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm long time Java developer myself and I find Python to be a natural transition. We've been using CherryPy at work and it's a pleasure to use. Clean, concise and simple. And it has a number of templating languages to use as well.

@WilliamBaughman GWT is nice, but it's different than most web frameworks. It's Java code compiled into Javascript. The times I've used it I've come away thinking it has some great features, but it's a little heavy for my taste. Haven't used it in about 3 years though.

CMS and done. by adosch · 2012-06-02 12:02 · Score: 3, Informative

Just use a CMS and call it good. I remember the days before very customizable templating where you hand-roled all that web site crap yourself. There are plenty of CMSs out there (TomatoCMS, Wordpress, Joomla, LightCMS, ezPublish, etc) that will do exactly what you want in about 20 minutes of your time. There's also lots of customizing and add-on's you can get for the more popular CMS's that I mentioned, too. And to keep to your Java roots, you can do all the client side stuff you want in JQuery or equivalent.

That's my $0.02.

Re:CMS and done. by Lehk228 · 2012-06-02 12:29 · Score: 4, Funny

QDB.us #307623 wordpress is an unauthenticated remote shell that, as a useful side feature, also contains a blog

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Spring, Scala/Akka/Play by MattW · 2012-06-02 12:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

I have two suggestions that are close to staying with Java:

(1) Check out Spring (http://www.springsource.org/); Spring has a bunch of goodies that make developing web apps easier, and the guys from spring (Adrian Colyer, Richard MacDougall) are thinking really hard about scalable web services. This is a foundation that will let you write in Java but still be prepared for the future.

(2) Even better, don't go with Java, but leverage some of what you learned and pick up Scala. See http://www.scala-lang.org/, or pick up Martin Odersky's book. Think of Scala as what Java would be if someone who appreciated terse, expressive syntax and great convention redesigned Java. Odersky wrote a reference JVM implementation while at Sun, and Scala compiles into Java bytecode and can directly use Scala libraries. (My first Scala project, for example, I used unboundid's LDAP libs directly in my Scala code.) Odersky along with some other luminaries (Viktor Klang, Paul Phillips, etc) have formed Typesafe, and are producing Scala the language + Akka (an actor framework) + Play (a web framework). Outside of play, many people are huge fans of Lift, and it does have some magic that no other framework has.

Remember how you said "modern" web application? Well, Scala supports functional programming, and you can fix functional and imperative code in the same application, which means you can support massively scalable sites by writing clean, idempotent code where needed.

If all this sounds bad, then I'd recommend Django+Python, as it is, imo, the best way for a relative web novice to produce decent code, and the amount you can do with a few hours reading docs and then digging in is shocking.

check what's available by rev0lt · 2012-06-02 12:11 · Score: 2

What you describe sounds a lot like many different existing applications. You may benefit from checking out what is already out there (opensource) and see if it is a good fit (or a good starting point) instead of building your own. Also, you may get some new ideas for your own design, so you won't waste your time.

Regarding programming languages, your decision may be conditioned to the deployment options. Do you want to run it on your own infrastructure, or do you want to put it on a shared host/cloud provider? For shared hosts, PHP or Python may be a good option.

Other aspect to consider is the widget toolkit. Do you have experience with one (or several) that may be more suited to a given language? As an example, GWT is Java-oriented, Dojo integrates well with Zend Framework (PHP), and (AFAIK) both ExtJS and DHTMLX are more language-agnostic. I actually use a lot DHTMLX and their scheduler component may be a good fit for what you're trying to do. Also, (at least) both DHTMLX and ExtJS have a design tool, so you can build your interface without the need for programming or any server-side code.

Finally, do you have other specific requirements, such as scalability, SGBD to use, multi-language support, big persistent data, complex objects, etc? That may also influence the choice of both the language and the framework. Remember, PHP applications are (mostly) stateless, and at every request your application starts from scratch. You can use cache and other tricks, but it will take you only so far - and if you are used to Java, you may take some time to adapt to these limitations.

My personal choice would be PHP with Zend Framework (v1.x), but I don't really like Java and don't have that much experience with other fancy web-oriented languages. Zend Framework is quite complete and probably will give you all the funcionality you may need for your application.

Re:The thing about Java is by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-02 12:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

You're talking about desktop GUI development - the submitter is asking about Java for web development. That's quite different. How many GUI apps do you use regularly that are written in Python, Ruby, or even Tcl/Tk?

Re:Nothing wrong with PHP. Don't be a language big by cowdung · 2012-06-02 12:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

PHP is garbage. Bad design all over the place. And I'm talking both about the language as well as the standard mess it calls a "library". It is the new BASIC.. stay away it'll damage your brain. For details see:

http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

There are better alternatives if you want to go the dynamic route: Ruby on Rails and I hear Python / Django is great too.

There's nothing wrong with Java as long as you know how to use it. But its always good to learn a new language. ASP.Net is also nice if you don't want to go dynamic.

The hardest part about moving away from Java is losing all the cool static analysis tools that are incorporated in Eclipse as well as tools such as FindBugs. But our experience with RoR (in spite of it missing some needed feature many Java frameworks have).

In summary: learn anything but PHP.. it truly is garbage that must die.

Need some client side? by rHBa · 2012-06-02 12:22 · Score: 4, Informative

To be honest you're gong to have to know some HTML/CSS at some point. It's considered impolite these days to insist (or expect) that the client side understands Java.

In other words, assume that Java ISN'T supported on the clientside.

Thought about sticking to a mobile app? by Kergan · 2012-06-02 12:24 · Score: 2

Depending your project's specifics, consider whether you actually need the web application. If it turns out that you don't, go straight for an Android app (since you know Java). After it's released, toss in a "dumb" (aka no admin area) web site -- it should amount to a couple of new (outsourced) views for whichever framework you picked to create your json or XML API.

I suggest this because writing complicated/interactive web views is a true mess for the uninitiated. The devil is in the plethora of browser-specific quirks, and you probably want to avoid running into them if you can get away with it.

If you really must, that said, there are lots of MVC frameworks for web development, including several in Java. Each language has its more popular ones; picking yours is, imho, mostly a matter of taste...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks

For javascript, don't miss jQuery and qUnit.

Re:Use a Framework! by AuMatar · 2012-06-02 12:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Frameworks are good only if all of the following are true:

1)You want to do exactly what the framework was set up to do. (in other words, everything about your app is cookie cutter)
2)You aren't a very good programmer
3)You already know the framework
4)You don't want to do something wild and crazy, like write an sql query (the framework way tends to use 3 objects which define interfaces and require you to jump through hoops, all so it will automatically grab the data and unbox it for you in the format it assumes you want it in, rather than the format you actually want it in).
5)You absolutely don't want to use any advanced database functionality whatsoever, since most frameworks these days assume that they can create and alter tables at will.

If those first two things aren't true, you're going to spend an order of magnitude more time working around the framework's limitations than you will save by using it. If 2 and 3 aren't true, you'll spend more time learning how to use the framework than you'd save by using it.

Frameworks are good for getting low to moderately skilled developers to pump out cookie cutter type apps quickly (so long as those apps don't need to worry about little things like scale and performance). They're absolutely horrible if you want to do anything novel, you need performance, or you actually know sql and just want to write a simple god damn query.

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Re:Most important by aztracker1 · 2012-06-02 12:36 · Score: 2

Honestly, not such a fan of either Java or PHP... I'd probably suggest Python/Django, NodeJS/Express or ASP.Net MVC as more modern frameworks that are faster to get up and running with.

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Keep It Simple, Stupid by TheDarkMaster · 2012-06-02 12:39 · Score: 2

Keep simple. I are suspect to suggest something, but I think the combo pure Java (no fancy frameworks) + Apache Tomcat + JSP is flexible enought to many web projects. You can use simple JSP, HTML with some JSP "tags", or the entire page created with a Java Class if you wish, and you can do more complex things when you need

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Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-06-02 12:40 · Score: 2

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Most important by countach74 · 2012-06-02 12:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

What do you mean you cannot build a 'modern' webapp using Java? It's done all the time. If memory serves, Gmail is in Java. I also disagree with PHP being the obvious choice. It's a lot like JavaScript: it's everywhere, so people use it. It doesn't change the fact that it's a piece of rubbish. Ruby and Python are much better suited towards modern web development. PHP is glorified template system that is extremely inconsistent and overall ass backwards. The whole notion of mapping a URI to a file is so 1990's.

RoR / Python on Heroku by AncientPC · 2012-06-02 12:50 · Score: 3, Informative

For reference, I come from a LAMP + CodeIgniter background. I've done some Java stuff for university and at IBM, but nothing on the web side.

If you're coming from a Java background, I'd suggest a Python + Django (heavier framework) / Flask (lighter framework), or Ruby on Rails on top of Heroku. PHP is cheap for hosting, expensive for developing. What's more important to you?

You can Google the differences between Python / Ruby. They're roughly the same, with Python requiring you to be more explicit while Ruby tends to do a little more "magic". Also, whitespace code blocks is a deal breaker for some people. I like Python more.

Heroku is free for a single web worker and a small shared database. They're built on top of AWS and charge a premium for the convenience of abstracting away dev ops. It's cheaper to use AWS directly or using a VPS, but at a time cost. How much time do you really want to spend doing dev ops rather than working on your core product?

I would worry about the web app first, then expose an API for use with mobile apps when it comes to it.

Web app development is drastically different from enterprise code. It's about constant iteration and deployment, scaling if necessary. Breaking out of your Java comfort zone will also help you grow as a programmer. You're going to have to learn HAML / LESS / JavaScript anyway for the front end.

Re:Use a Framework! by ZombieBraintrust · 2012-06-02 12:59 · Score: 3, Informative

Given the description of what he wants to do I would encourage him to use a framework. Web Frameworks are setup to do what he described.

Re:Nothing wrong with PHP. Don't be a language big by Fnord · 2012-06-02 13:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

Parent was me, forgot to log in

Stick to your comfort zone, but build on it by laffer1 · 2012-06-02 13:02 · Score: 2

Modern web applications use ajax. You need to pick a javascript library. Depending on your needs the right answer might be JQuery, Dojo, YUI, Prototype, etc.

If SQL Database:
You need to pick an ORM. Most people work with them now. The popular Java solution is hibernate. I'm a big fan of Apache Cayenne. You also need to pick a database. MySQL (or fork) or PostgreSQL are good choices.
else if NoSQL
pick a NoSQL database, but avoid CouchDB. Hadoop, mongo, cassandra... there's loads of them.

You need to pick a servlet container:
Tomcat, Jetty, ...

You need to pick a Java web framework:
There are hundreds of choices. Spring is the hot thing. There are many unpopular choices that are good like Wicket, Click, etc. It really depends on what you're building and how it can integrate with your ORM or NoSQL database. Click + Cayenne work well together. Wicket + Cayenne do as well. Spring works better with hibernate, etc.

For JSON, SimpleJSON is a good choice.

You also need to decide how you're hosting it. If you think you're going to do cloud computing, plan for it at the beginning of the project. Different providers offer NoSQL and SQL database options you can just use. It may simplify things. You also need to program significantly differently for a cloud environment to keep costs down. More requests mean more money with some. Lowering CPU load or minimizing database queries might matter too.

There isn't one right answer now. Young people use Python, PHP or Ruby. I see a lot of interest in Python. I'm not a big fan, but it's not a terrible language either.

If you think this could take off, sticking to popular software will aid in finding developers later. At work, we have a lot of problems because of our archaic stack of Mod Perl + (Ingres, PostgreSQL, MySQL, BDB and Lucene) + Apache HTTPD + HTML::Mason + DBIx::Class + legacy C apps running on Linux VMs. We're starting to throw in more java projects now. When I say legacy C, I mean pre ANSI C. This stuff was written in the 80s. No one has even heard of Ingres.

I have oddball tastes in Java like Cayenne and Click and I've made successful projects with them, but it won't help you on a resume and it won't be easy to get people that already know the technologies.

As for browsers, don't worry to much. If your site works in Safari or Chrome and Firefox, most people can see it. If you throw in IE9, you've got most things covered. Safari and Chrome both use the WebKit rendering engine, but have different JavaScript engines so you will want to test on both, but they do usually render similarly. Bonus points for old IE or Opera. Most browsers are trying to be standards compliant. If you want to target Opera, avoid Dojo javascript library.

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Re:Coldfusion by QuebecNerd · 2012-06-02 13:07 · Score: 2

I agree with you and I frequently use Railo on AWS/EC2 images. I really don't know why people are so judgmental on ColdFusion. Many of them never tried it. It's fast, mature, easy to deploy and plays well with others (java, .net, etc). I first used ColdFusion in 1995. I was bundled FREE with Oreilly 'website pro' web server software back in the days when they were making software.

Java is great for websites by htnmmo · 2012-06-02 13:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

Almost all the sites I've built are written in Java. Stick with Java. I've written sites in PHP and I've also had to work on updates to some PHP sites. If you're already familiar with Java dealing with PHP will feel like a joke. PHP is great when you don't want to write your own software since there are so many publicly available stuff out there in PHP. Don't worry, you won't find a lack of Java libraries that will do anything you want to do.

Don't bother trying to learn a new language because you'll just slow yourself down trying to learn the semantics of the language instead of the details of the new libraries you'll be using. I know java gets a bad wrap in terms of performance but I've always found that Java kicks PHP's ass in terms of performance in the tests I've done.

The main issue with java is that when you're using a servlet container like Tomcat, the process runs constantly and takes up memory. It's not that much but it's hard to find Java hosting because the memory issues makes it hard for a webhost to put thousands of websites on the same server.

Your best bet is going to be to find a cheap VPN when you get started but check the big webhosts to. I remember LunarPages used to offer JSP support in the past.

There are a bunch of different frameworks. Stick to ones that are popular because you'd rather have some limited functionality now rather than an unsupported framework in the future. Which has happened to me.

I believe right now that's Spring but Struts is still pretty popular too.

I've found NetBeans to be a great IDE and it supports Spring.

Re:Java is great for websites by KermodeBear · 2012-06-03 01:56 · Score: 2

As someone who develops with PHP for a living, I'm going to go ahead and say: Stick with what you know. It doesn't matter what the back end of your system is written in - as long as it is written well. If you know Java, then use Java. There's lots of Java sites out there and, if it wasn't for the .jsp extension on the pages, I wouldn't ever know the difference.

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Love sees no species.

First, dont ask in slashdot. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2012-06-02 13:11 · Score: 3, Funny

If you describe your idea in sufficient detail and you don't even know which tool to use, someone else will beat you to it. If you try to hide important details, you would appear to be cagey and would not be taken seriously. So best thing is learn some tool and get to work. A good idea will work even if the tool is less than optimal. A crappy idea would not flourish even with the best tool.

Most importantly, stop listening to strangers like me.

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sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact

Facebook, Google+ by ZombieBraintrust · 2012-06-02 13:11 · Score: 3, Informative

For the general public, it will be a site where they can view upcoming events, filter them by type, date etc. and view details of events they're interested in. There will also be an admin section to the app where organizations who want to post their events can log in and set them up.

Doesn't Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and RSS feeds already have this down? You may want to consider using API's that hook into existing infrastructure rather than reinventing the wheel.

Re:Java programmer here by SplashMyBandit · 2012-06-02 13:21 · Score: 2

GWT is pretty good (as a Java solution). Yeah, once your project (more than a single person for an extended development period) gets big then static compile time checking can save you from a lot of trouble.

Re:Most important by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-02 13:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

Google is not a PHP/Python shop. The four development languages are C++, Java, Python, and Go.

Gmail is indeed written in Java.

Re:Most important by spacenet · 2012-06-02 13:23 · Score: 3, Funny

Google Web Toolkit.

Re:Most important by spacenet · 2012-06-02 13:24 · Score: 2

Sorry, meant to reply to the above post. Gmail is not written with the Google Web Toolkit, but other Google applications (which can be considered "modern") are.

Stick with Java by htnmmo · 2012-06-02 13:34 · Score: 2

Don't bother learning PHP it'll just slow you down learning the semantics of a new language and if you're used to dealing with Java PHP will feel like a joke. Java gets a bad wrap but I've found it to be faster than PHP in my tests.

I build most of my sites in Java using my own MVC framework. I've done some sites in PHP and have had to modify other PHP sites as well as looked into other languages. I still like Java the best and you can find a library to do almost anything you want. The only reason I'd pick something like PHP these days is if I don't want to build a site myself and want to use something prebuilt like wordpress or Joomla.

The only downside is that your servlet container (ie tomcat) is persistent and will take up a bit of memory. Not a huge amount but it makes it difficult to find cheap webhosting because providers can't throw thousands of websites on a server like they can with plain HTML and PHP. Try and find a good cheap VPS it's more secure and you won't have to worry about your site getting defaced because some other idiot didn't update their PHP software. That's happened to me.

Don't go with new frameworks. Go with popular ones that have been around for a while. I've been bitten in the ass when I built a website for a client and the framework I used was no longer around.

Spring is a good choice. I like to use NetBeans as my IDE. I've found it to work the best for me.

Re:Nothing wrong with PHP. Don't be a language big by Kalriath · 2012-06-02 13:36 · Score: 2

It is easier to switch to C# from Java than PHP, which is an ugly hack on top of ugly hacks. Classes, namespaces, type safety, all these are tacked on poorly to PHP, and native in Java or C#.

Just use ASP.NET if you want to use something familiar to Java.

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For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".

Re:Use a Framework! by rev0lt · 2012-06-02 13:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

While I do understand your point (and agree to a certain extent), frameworks usually provide you a nice set of consistent components that have been used and TESTED by a ton of people before you. Shure there are bugs, and for simpler applications they may be overkill, but you also get the benefit of a (mostly) tried-and-true library. If your task is designing an application, it makes no sense wasting your time developing, testing and debugging every single core funcionality you need (eg. database api, routing, caching, locale handling, etc). If even the code produced by some (very smart) framework programmers has bugs after extensive testing and usage by third parties, imagine your own code.

Re:here is the most important tip... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2012-06-02 13:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

Any of the Gawker Media websites, some times you have to reload t hem 3 times to get the fricking hyperlinks to work.

A little tangent....

Gawker's websites suck in other ways that relate to usuability too. I use noscript religiously, there is nothing about the gawker websites that need javascript, but all you get is a nearly blank page if you don't enable javascript. UNLESS you change your brower's user agent to something Gawker doesn't recognize as supporting javascript (I change mine to an old version of googlebot). Then they send you pages that work perfectly well without javascript.

So clearly they can do non-javascript pages, but if they recognize your browser they won't give them to you and even worse, they won't even explain what's going on, it just silently fails with a blank page. They can't even be bothered to tell you to enable javascript, which is really just pathetic.

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When information is power, privacy is freedom.

Re:codeigniter + datamapper by MisterSquid · 2012-06-02 14:06 · Score: 2

(I'm going to make my reply here as it's about midway on the page and I haven't seen anyone make this very obvious point.)

You can teach just about anyone to write usable Python, PHP, or Ruby. Fast. You can teach people with high school diplomas how to code in these languages especially if you have a framework in place.

Java not so much.

If you want to get started fast and have access to potential talent, go with the more accessible skill set. If you want to do it *just* right (and have, imo, a needlessly complicated code base) you can go with Java, C++, or PERL.

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blog

Re:Most important by Jane+Q.+Public · 2012-06-02 14:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

I second countach74.

Python, or my personal preference Ruby, are vastly superior choices. Django and Rails are intentionally -- and more to the point, well -- designed to be friendly web frameworks, built on top of their respective languages.

I don't even call PHP a "language". It is just a hodgepodge of inconsistent utility functions bundled together. PHP was originally designed with the Web in mind, and only later added pretensions of being a general-purpose language, with Object Orientation kind of bolted on even later as an afterthought.

Because Python and Ruby are far more internally consistent than PHP (Ruby even more than Python, in my opinion), they are also easier to learn. However, learning the language and also the framework entails some serious work. That is just the nature of the beast... there is no getting around it. You need to know the language, the framework, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Nobody said serious web development was easy.

Don't write a mobile app by hawguy · 2012-06-02 14:13 · Score: 2, Interesting

There's nothing I hate more than going to a mobile web site, getting a nagging popup telling me to download their app, and then finding out that the app gives me less functionality than the web site.

Just build a good mobile website. Modern mobile web browsers have become quite capable and there are fewer and fewer advantages to an app. And I really don't want to download an app for every webpage I frequent, that's what bookmarks are for.

Stick with Java by Baba+Ram+Dass · 2012-06-02 14:16 · Score: 2

First, I'd like to say whoever thinks there's no serious web development in Java simply doesn't know what they're talking about. Probably the same kind of person who believes Java is incredibly slow. This isn't 1998. Things have changed a lot.

Second, I actually came from a PHP background. I think PHP gets a bad rap because it's so easy to learn, so there's TONS of "developers" out there who never took the time to learn how to properly design and develop software with it. But it can be done. If you go this route, look into an MVC framework. Zend has some really cool stuff.

Finally, I would personally recommend sticking with Java. Like many here probably, I make my living with Java and so I'm most definitely biased. I work on a "real time" Java team at a major corporation, and we deal with anything that is real time and deals with Java. This obviously includes web development, which is my personal area of expertise. If you name it, we've developed with it. I've used many different frameworks, both server and client side.

For the server side, I think the best Java framework hands down is Spring. Its MVC module is a dream, and the framework itself is very well designed. The API is well documented. There's loads of resources too. It's really a developer's framework; made by developer for developers. The Spring guys really know what they're doing. For the view, I'd say stick with JSP. The newer versions have a lot of powerful features over their earlier incarnations, and you keep full control over the HTML. Learning how to debug JSF/RichFaces/ICEfaces/etc is a pain in the butt, especially if you're still learning web development with Java. Other good alternatives for view would be lightweight templating frameworks, like Freemarker or Velocity (which Spring has good integration with).

For client side, you need to brush up on HTML and DOM. You need to make yourself familiar with a good JavaScript framework, my personal favorite is jQuery. Learn how to keep your markup (HTML), your functionality (JavaScript), and your styling (CSS) logically separated. I hate to see these things embedded into one another like a nasty hodgepodge of bad software design.

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Truckin like the Doo-Dah man...

Re:Most important by thisisauniqueid · 2012-06-02 14:21 · Score: 2, Informative

You're right on the list of four languages. But Gmail (at least the frontend) is written in hand-coded Javascript. The whole point of the Closure javascript-to-javascript compiler was to optimize and obfuscate hand-coded Javascript for Gmail.

Re: Agree by Billly+Gates · 2012-06-02 15:20 · Score: 2

FORGET java, forget everything you know about JAVA development.
Go with PHP, and CodeIgniter or similar framework which does not force you to their patterns (ZFW used to be like this...)

and keep it simple - keep everything as simple as possible.

And "PHP Templating" is *NOT* templating, it is spaghetti some ate yesterday and came up today.

I second that.

Java is really nice to have a 1 million line code complex business intelligence CRM and enterrpise app that takes a year to develop and is scalable with real engineering and architecture. But for a simple website? Come on!

Php has got a really bad wrap like its the Visual Basic of web development. But basic has its purpose for simple client server apps that need to be made quickly with up to medium complexity. Php with the right framework is great in that a good week you can have something ready that would take a month in Java.

Also what about liability? Will your ISP carrier it forever? How do you know Oracle wont sue for copyright violation for not buying an ORacle RDMS license? Their lawyers have proven to take this extreme view of copyright as a symbol with the same name in the same structure sequence identical to actual copyright infringement. I do not agree with that view and neither did the judge but I do not trust Oracle and this guy can not afford to defend himself.

Php is run inside the natively compiled web server software engine so it is faster than interpreted languages, though not as fast as .NET and Java.

It is a shame because I learned real object oriented programing with Java. It is amazing what mismanagement of an asset can do to a language.

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http://saveie6.com/

Re:Most important by PCM2 · 2012-06-02 15:29 · Score: 4, Informative

You're talking at cross purposes here. Obviously the front-end UI of any modern Web application is going to be written using a lot of JavaScript. Java, Python, and PHP -- and many other languages -- are primarily for the back-end code. Gmail is certainly not accessing its database or implementing IMAP and SMTP in JavaScript.

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Breakfast served all day!

Re:Most important by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-02 15:55 · Score: 3, Informative

Maybe it was JavaScript after all?

At the USENIX annual conference last month, Gmail engineer Adam de Boor surprised the audience by noting that the company's Gmail service was written entirely in JavaScript, and that all of its code, around 443,000 lines worth, was written by hand.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/google-executive-frustrated-java-c-complexity-375

Re:Most important by jmerlin · 2012-06-02 16:00 · Score: 2

GMail, and much of Google's stuff is written with GWT, which is a platform for developing the client-side of web applications that compiles Java code into JS. You can't really make a modern web app with Java and run it as java (you know, through a JRE, unless someone makes a JRE in the browser, and lol @ that), but you can cross-compile. GWT is like Coffeescript on steroids with a framework behind it as well. These meta-compilation schemes are becoming more and more popular. Look at Facebook, they write their website in PHP and compile it to C++ for efficiency with Hiphop. Google's Traceur compiles code from ES5+ down to ES3 so you can write code with advanced ES5 features on modern browsers that still only have ES3 support.

It is still pretty common to write Java back-ends (primarily on Tomcat and a few other major players), but that's becoming less and less common in newer more modern web apps. I have no citation for this outside of my own observations, and I surely haven't seen everything so I might just be horribly wrong.

Re:Coldfusion by Concerned+Onlooker · 2012-06-02 17:42 · Score: 2

I tried it a few years ago. Admittedly I never got great at it, but I was appalled by the amount of code needed to declare and display a simple variable value. I'm sure it's fine for lots of stuff, but the irritation factor was high for me.

<cfset variablename="value"> <cfoutput> #variablename# </cfoutput>

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http://www.rootstrikers.org/

Re:here is the most important tip... by Purity+Of+Essence · 2012-06-02 20:23 · Score: 2

I use noscript religiously, there is nothing about the gawker websites that need javascript, but all you get is a nearly blank page if you don't enable javascript.

Best argument for noscript I've ever read.

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+0 Meh

Re:Most important by mangu · 2012-06-02 21:06 · Score: 2

most of the sites for which I develop have been on hosted servers. And most of those support Rails these days, but relatively few actively support Python and its frameworks.

I haven't noticed this. The only thing that Ruby has over Python is that it has one framework, Rails, that predominates. With Python there is Django, TurboGears, Zope, and a bunch of others. However I've never found a hosting company that offers Rails but not Python.

An even more important tip by Arker · 2012-06-02 21:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

I dont care what language(s) and toolkit(s) you use on your backend. But when you get ready to send code to my web browser, send HTML.

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Re:Nothing wrong with PHP. Don't be a language big by Xest · 2012-06-03 03:45 · Score: 2

"But its always good to learn a new language. ASP.Net is also nice if you don't want to go dynamic."

Microsoft implemented the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) in .NET 4 that allows you to have dynamic objects. The best part is you can even do your own dynamic implementation quite trivially (it's just a case of implementing certain interfaces, inheriting certain objects). This means you have the best of both worlds, you can go dynamic where it makes sense, whilst stick to the benefits of type safety and better performance where it matters. It's really a pretty cool piece of technology.

Re:Use a Framework! by story645 · 2012-06-03 08:06 · Score: 2

Since Mongo is a database and not a framework, it should be used with a framework (for example the big Python ones, Pyramid and Django, support it), not a in place of one. This of course assumes that Mongo is more suited for his task then a plain old relational database, which I'm not so sure since it seems like the app is pretty well structured and the fields are more or less fixed.

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open source modern art: laser taggi

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