14 Technologies Every Web Developer Should Be Able to Explain

by Er. UMESH THAKUR

I often find myself cerebrating of incipient and simple ways to expound some pretty intricate web development concepts to our clients. What I have found is that the concepts aren’t arduous to grasp, but rather all the other terminology is genuinely hard to keep straight. This is my endeavor to explicate some mundane terminology in today’s modern web world (as of January 2015) and my hope is that you can find it auxiliary additionally.

1. Browsers

Browsers are the interpreters of the web. They request information and then when they receive it, they show us on the page in a format we can visually perceive and understand.

    Google Chrome - Currently, the most popular browser brought to you by Google
    Safari - Apple’s web browser
    Firefox - Open-source browser fortified by the Mozilla Substratum
    Internet Explorer - Microsoft’s browser. You will most often here web developers repine about this one.

2. HTML

HTML is a markup language. It provides structure of a website so that web browsers ken what to show.

3. CSS

CSS is a Cascading Style Sheet. CSS let’s web designers change colors, fonts, animations, and transitions on the web. They make the web look good.

LESS - a CSS pre-compiler to make working with CSS more facile and integrate functionality
SASS - a CSS pre-compiler to make working with CSS more facile and integrate functionality

4. Programming Languages

Programming languages are ways to communicate to computers and tell them what to do. There are many different programming languages just like there are many different lingual languages (english, spanish, french, chinese, etc). One is not better than the other. Developers typically are just proficient at a couple so they promote those more than others. Below are just some of the languages and links to their homepages

    Javascript - utilized by all web browsers, Meteor, and lots of other frameworks
    Coffeescript - is a kind of “dialect” of javascript. It is viewed as simpler and more facile on your ocular perceivers as a developer but it complies (converts) back into javascript
    Python -utilized by the Django framework and utilized in an abundance of mathematical calculations
    Ruby - utilized by the Ruby on Rails framework
    PHP - utilized by Wordpress
    Go - more incipient language, built for celerity.
    Objective-C - the programming language behind iOS (your iPhone), lead by Apple
    Swift - Apple’s most incipient programming language
    Java - Utilized by Android (Google) and a plethora of desktop applications.

5. Frameworks

Frameworks are built to make building and working with programming languages more facile. Frameworks typically take all the arduous, perpetual tasks in establishing an incipient web application and either do them for you or make them very facile for you to do.

    Meteor - a full-stack (front and back end) javascript framework
    Node.js - a server-side javascript framework
    Ruby on Rails - a full-stack framework built utilizing ruby
    Django - a full-stack framework built utilizing python
    Ionic - a mobile framework
    Phonegap / Cordova - a mobile framework that exposes native api’s of iOS and Android for use when inditing javascript
    Bootstrap - a UI (utilizer interface) framework for building with HTML/CSS/Javascript
    Substratum - a UI framework for building with HTML/CSS/Javascript
    Wordpress - a CMS (content management system) built on PHP. Currently, about 20% of all websites run on this framework
    Drupal - a CMS framework built utilizing PHP.
    .NET - a full-stack framework built by Microsoft
    Angular.js - a front-end javascript framework.
    Ember.js - a front-end javascript framework.
    Backbone.js - a front-end javascript framework.

6. Libraries

Libraries are groupings of code snippets to enable a substantial amount of functionality without having to indite it all by yourself. Libraries typically additionally go through the trouble to ascertain the code is efficient and works well across browsers and contrivances (not always the case, but typically they do).

jQuery
Underscore

7. Databases

Databases are where all your data is stored. It’s like a bunch of filing cabinets with folders filled with files. Databases come mainly in two flavors: SQL and NoSQL. SQL provides more structure which avails with ascertaining all the data is veridical and validated. NoSQL provides a plethora of flexibility for building and maintaining applications.

    MongoDB - is an open-sourced NoSQL database and is currently the only database fortified by Meteor.
    Redis - is the most popular key-value store. It is lighting expeditious for retrieving data but doesn’t sanction for much depth in the data storage.
    PostgreSQL - is a popular open-sourced SQL database.
    MySQL - is another popular open-sourced SQL database. MySQL is utilized in Wordpress websites.
    Oracle - is an enterprise SQL database.
    SQL Server - is an SQL server manager engendered by Microsoft.

8. Client (or Client-side)

A client is one utilizer of an application. It’s you and me when we visit http://google.com. Client’s can be desktop computers, tablets, or mobile contrivances. There are typically multiple clients interacting with the same application stored on a server.

9. Server (or Server-side)

Server is where the application code is typically stored. Requests are made to the server from clients, and the server will accumulate the congruous information and respond to those requests.
10. Front-end

The front-end is comprised of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. This is how and where the website is shown to users.

11. Back-end

The back-end is comprised of your server and database. It’s the place where functions, methods, and data manipulation transpires that you don’t what the client’s to visually perceive.

12. Protocols

Protocols are standardized ordinant dictations for how to pass information back and forth between computers and contrivances.

    HTTP - This protocol is how each website gets to your browser. Whenever you indite a website like “http://google.com” this protocol requests the website from google’s server and then receives a replication with the HTML, CSS, and javascript of the website.
    DDP - is an incipient protocol engendered in connection with Meteor. The DDP protocol uses websockets to engender a consistent connection between the client and the server. This constant connection let’s websites and data on those websites update in authentic-time without refreshing your browser.
    REST - is a protocol mainly utilized for API’s. It has standard methods like GET, POST, and PUT that let information be exchanged between applications.

13. API

An API is an application programming interface. It is engendered by the developer of an application to sanction other developers to utilize some of the applications functionality without sharing code. Developers expose “end points” which are like inputs and outputs of the application. Utilizing an API can control access with API keys. Examples of good API’s are those engendered by Facebook, Twitter, and Google for their web accommodations.

14. Data formats

Data formats are the structure of how data is stored.

    JSON - is expeditiously becoming the most popular data format
    XML - was the main data format early in the web days and predominantly utilized by Microsoft systems
    CSV - is data formatted by commas. Excel data is typically formatted this way.

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something in here that gave you an incipient way to cogitate or verbalize about web technologies. This was not denoted to be an all encompassing list, but rather a way to verbalize about all the great technologies we have at our finger tips.

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