I need a Hero!
– Preferably Scriptman from Planet Java

“Your web application should be built using a large-scale server-side framework or set of techniques facilitating larger systems ….. Your server should have a service design – and you need to think in terms of supporting multiple clients doing different things. You only need to implement one client, but the design of your server code should clearly handle this. Client-side framework: Your web application should also be built using a structural client-side framework (new absolute requirement from 2014) to support large-scale development.”

The course requirement for the project in ‘TDDD27 – Advanced Web Programming’ is super obvious … Scriptman where are you? I don’t have Kryptonite but make a fairly good Grashopper (at least it’s green) I could even put stones in it!

This course is actually very interesting.
I have three problems though:

1. I had too many ideas to start with, there is just so many great ideas that can be realized through a website. Finally boiled down to choosing between building a site for second hand course literature or explore the idea I have for Sofster AB. I picked the Sofster idea. I will tell you more about it when I defined it more properly. Bam Bam Cliff hanger :)

2. There is without exaggerating millions (ok a little bit of exaggeration) of frameworks to chose from. Being a control freak like myself I want to try them all before deciding. This is obviously not possible since the amount of combinations (one server side and one client side framework) grow exponentially the more frameworks you discover. Screwed before even started. Great!

3. It has indeed been a busy spring semester. Something had to be put aside, unfortunately it was this project, it has now been on hold for 6 weeks. It is today one week until deadline and I have this:

Oh lord want you buy me SOME MORE TIME? Enough with the whining, I’m learning lots, the sun is shining and I do enjoy web programming. It is just slightly terrifying working by yourself, I’m not a backend kind of girl, I like the front more. For example: spending four hours on choosing a background photo is a really bad decision when you get graded on backend functionality…

Curios about web development? Check out these frameworks and start playing around. If you do that you might not have to scream for Scriptman one week before deadline like myself …

Server side frameworks:
Django
Express.js (Node.js based)
Ruby on Rails
TurboGears
Codegniter
ASP.Net MVC
Play ( Java frameworks)
Lift ( Java frameworks)
Meteor (use back-end a service)

Client-side frameworks:
Angular.js
Ember js
Knockout

As this would not be enough you also need to select a database to store your data and an ORM to send that data to your database.

What did I chose one might wonder?

I decided after trying several approaches (and failed several times) to go with the MEAN stack and Mongoose as ORM (a big thanks to John who showed me this). If I haven’t scarred you away yet, here (easier) and here (trickier) are great tutorial on how to set up a basic MEAN application. It is actually pretty cool because it is a Single Page Application which means that content gets loaded into the index file dynamically without the page refreshing.

Pray for me next Wednesday!
Yours Truly,
/Sofster

Ps. Sublime Text is a great text editor for doing web coding!