Web applications
Web applications or web apps are very popular. If you have ever played a game in a browser, used an online image editor, or even used an online calculator, you’ve used a web app. This course has been written through a web app, and you’re using a web app to access it!
These are a way of providing a piece of software through your browser, and this is useful for a few reasons. When someone creates traditional software, it will usually work on one operating system such as iOS or Windows, and need to be adapted or even re-written for another operating system. Web apps don’t have this problem – one web app will work on any device which can open a modern web browser.
Users don’t need to download anything; they just enter the URL and they’re on the web app. This also makes it very easy to update, as developers can just make changes to the code and it automatically updates the web app.
Making web apps
Web apps are halfway between software development and web development; they are usually written in languages such as Python or Ruby on Rails for the back-end, but use the web languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to provide the front-end. They usually have a database so knowing a bit of SQL is useful, although there are libraries which can do this for you in Python which can be useful.
The great thing about web apps is that you have complete control of them – you can make them do anything which you can program. This means that you can be very creative when you make a web app, and you can play with data in new and interesting ways.
Optional exercise: have a go at making a web app
If you want to have a go at making a web app, you will need some familiarity with a web app language. Python is a good first language for this, as it is quite simple to use and to set up.
There are many fantastic courses available which you help you to create a web app, and a good one to start with is the DigitalOcean course which guides you through the whole process.
The next step will give you the opportunity to test your understanding of web technologies.
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