Should I Use a Framework While Learning Web Development

Question

I realize that this may be subjective but I truly need an answer to this and I can\'t seem to find anything close enough to it in the rest of the Forum. I have read some folks

Answer 1

I think web development is way more than anyone grasps when they first start getting into it! Read this and know that it is all optional...but required to be really good at what you do.

I suggest that you spend time learning your language first. I would suggest learning C# simply because it is vastly more marketable and it is usually directly supported in most of MS products. By learning C# - programming in ASP.NET, console apps, servers, services, desktop apps, etc. will all be within your reach. You can program for most of the MS products as well as on many Linux type platforms.

Once you have this down then you can move to programming for the web as programming for the web has some intricacies that most other environments don't have. Concepts such as sessions, caching, state management, cross site scripting, styling, client side vs server side programming, browser support, how HTTP works, get vs post, how a form works, cookies, etc. are all at the top of the list of things to learn separately not to mention learning the ASP.NET base frameworks and namespaces.

Once you have the programming language down and then the concepts of web programming I suggest that you pause and learn database design. Don't worry about performance just yet...try to first learn good design. Performance will come next. A good start for you is Access (blasphemy I know). It is easy for a beginner to work with. And it translates into a more robust platform such as SQL Server easily. Learn at the very least some SQL...but I suggest that you learn as much as your stomach can handle. I heard someone say that SQL is like the assembly language of the database. The number one thing that slows an application to a halt is piss poor database design and poor queries. Once you have this knowledge - stuff it away in the back of your mind and take a look at a good ORM. NHybernate is probably best at the moment but is more complex that the basic learner needs. For that reason I currently suggest getting LINQ to SQL up and running as it is SUPER EASY to work with. Then look at Entity Framework (although I still think it sucks...and you should wait till EF 2.0...ERRRRR...now 4.0 released with .net 4.0). Then NHybernate.

Now is the time to start to understand the infrastructure that is required by web development. You may bump your head against this as you learn some of the web programming stuff. But you need to understand the basics of DNS, IIS, load balancers, sticky routing, round robin, clustering, fault tolerance, server hardware setup, web farms, cache farms (MemCached Win32, Velocity), SMTP, MSMQ, database mail queuing, etc. Many people may say you don't need this. That there will be some knowledgeable network admin to help you out here. However they generally know things that impact them...not you. The more you know here the more valuable you will be to the company that hires you.

Now you can get into the details of best practices and design patterns. Learn about the basics such as repository pattern, factory pattern, facade pattern, model view presenter pattern, model view controller pattern, observer pattern, and various other things. Follow Martin Fowler and others for suggestions here. Take a look at concepts such as inversion of control, dependency injection, SOLID principle, DRY, FIT, test driven design, and domain driven design, etc. Learn as much as you can here before moving to the next step.

NOW you can think about frameworks! Start by creating a basic application with ASP Classic (comes with IIS for free!). This will give you a flavor of a no frills web development environment. Take a look at ASP.NET web forms (briefly) to see how MS attempted to make things easier by hiding all the complex stuff (which you now know how to manage on your own from your readings of the above materials!!!). Now you no longer need ASP.NET Web Forms. Move immediately to ASP.NET MVC. The MVC framwork gives you all the power you need to create a good easily manageable web application. If you build something really big no framework for pure web development may be able to deal with what you need. However MVC is way more extensible for such UBER custom scenarios.

Now that you have made it through the journey to ASP.NET MVC you can take a look at things such as Microsofts Enterprise Application Blocks (such as they use at MySpace). Take a look at Elmah error logging (a must have). Look at how to build a custom SiteMapProvider for your MVC site. If you need to get into searching stuff understand Lucene.NET.

And if you made it this far...you are ready to figure out the rest on your own as it comes up! Have fun. There is a lot of room in this space for a person with some understanding of all of the above concepts.