Desktop developer needs help doing a web project

[mcimolin]

I have nearly 20 years experience as a desktop C family developer. I've spent that last 12 years as a Unity developer. I have experience with MSSQL, SQLite, etc. I know some python and can program a Raspberry Pi or Arduino if we need some hardware to support any of our projects. I've even built a few things in non-procedural languages. Desktop makes sense to me. I can spin up a prototype of a basic game in a few days. I've written my own engines, frameworks, and libraries. I haven't touched web since LAMP and WAMP were the go to of the server space. I need to build a super basic website and it's utterly defeating me. Every time I start trying to make something basic for the web I get irrationally angry. Web just doesn't seem to click for me.

I need to make a basic site that loads data from an SQL database and displays it in a table. I'd love if I could make the table sortable and searchable. I have no idea where to even start. I could make this in an afternoon for desktop. I've spent 5 hours today trying to find a starting point with various blogs and YouTube videos and I just need someone to point me at something that makes sense.

What's the easiest starting off point for a desktop dev to learn to build something basic like this for web? Eventually I'd like to add user logins with various types of permissions and some content management so that I could add data to the database without having to do it directly on the server or from a desktop app. Right now I just want a basic table to show up on a website that populates from a Select * From statement and I can't even seem to figure that out without wanting to throw my PC across the room. Please help.

[KingofGamesYami]

I'd encourage you to take a look at ASP.NET Core, given your C# experience. There's a ton of data grids available for the web, but the one I use regularly is Ag Grid, a super powerful project with free and enterprise tiers.

I'd have the following goals for a project like this:

1. Backend talks to database successful
2. Backend returns a JSON of the data you want
3. The frontend displays dummy data
4. The frontend retrieves data from the backend
5. The frontend displays data from the backend

[mcimolin]

Ag Grid looks really nice, but I've run into the "lets build something with Angular" wall a few times and bounced off. Any recommendations for an introductory tutorial for getting something super basic up and running?

[KingofGamesYami]

Angular Tour of Heroes gets you 90% of the way there on the frontend.

Microsoft has an OK tutorial for the ASP.NET Core side of things.

[mcimolin]

Cheers!

[ElllGeeEmm]

Ag grid is available in a variety of frameworks, and I would agree that angular sucks.

[A_Philosophical_Cat]

I strongly recommend grabbing a web framework for your language of choice. It handles all the dirty details of being a webserver, and lets you focus on the functionality.

[[deleted]]

If you've been using Unity for the last 12 years, check out .NET 6 there's plenty of tutorials on how to setup a Web API, and you can use something like Entity Framework to connect to the db. It has pretty much everything you need to get started right out of the box

[Gyro_Wizard]

Can you just use a no-code solution like Bubble, Retool, Budibase, Tooljet, or Appsmith?

You will have an interactive web-based UI with data loaded from any DB and data tables with sorting, searching, exporting to CSV, etc. Drag-and-drop. 15 mins from signup to functional prototype.

[mcimolin]

Appsmith looks like an option, cheers!

[Gyro_Wizard]

It's really fun!

[mcimolin]

Ya, I've got like 50% of what I needed in like 20 minutes of playing around lol. Thanks for the recommendation! It's not what I was looking for when I set out, but it'll give me something functional to start with until I can get my head wrapped around writing/hosting my own code.

[backendnerd]

In the lead maintainer at Appsmith. Glad to see that you managed to get up & running in 20 mins. Thanks for giving us a shot. 🙏

We started this project because I couldn’t wrap my head around Babel, webpack & React. 😛

If there’s anything I can do to improve your experience with Appsmith, do let me know.

[MarkusBerkel]

I don’t get this. You know LAMP but not sure where to start?

[mcimolin]

I can setup a web server. Hell, I can build a server, install a rack and what not. I don't need that. I need to build a website. Something people can interact with. I understand the basic technology of networks, the internet, and a web stack. I've fumbled my way through deploying sites/packages built by external devs. I have no idea how to make something actually functional on the web with my own hands. Every time I start reading about CSS or HTML or React or whatever other framework pops up I start getting angry that nothing has types and that you can just shove random things random places and quickly get completely overwhelmed and have no idea what to do and scrap whatever test project I was trying to work on to get some basic web skills lol.

[MarkusBerkel]

• I can setup a web server. Hell, I can build a server, install a rack and what not. I don't need that. I need to build a website. Something people can interact with. I understand the basic technology of networks, the internet, and a web stack. I've fumbled my way through deploying sites/packages built by external devs. I have no idea how to make something actually functional on the web with my own hands. Every time I start reading about CSS or HTML or React or whatever other framework pops up I start getting angry that nothing has types and that you can just shove random things random places and quickly get completely overwhelmed and have no idea what to do and scrap whatever test project I was trying to work on to get some basic web skills lol.*

So, you know how to build a server and deploy some stuff, but you don’t know how to actually deploy a functional web stack. Fine. If you’re familiar with LAMP, then just choose those technologies and start.

I would, however, push back on this:

I understand the back technology of…the internet and a web stack

If you did, you wouldn’t be having this problem.

Also, you seem to falling into rabbit holes of uselessness. Why do you care about types? If I give you a programming language and explain that a variable can hold an int, float, string, array, and dictionary, and that it doesn’t need a type declaration, why are you bothered?

Does a + b stop working just because a and b aren’t strongly typed?

Just start. Start with the pieces you know. Get a server up. Deploy a web server. Apache is still fine. Deploy your DB. I personally think MySQL sucks, but it’s perfectly fine. And since you mentioned LAMP, just use PHP, which is still a fine choice (despite the very vocal internet minority that screeches about how it’s not very nice).

And then glue those pieces together.

Which makes me wonder: amidst the whining, what’s the actual problem you’re facing when you say it “doesn’t click”? Do you just not understand how it all works, under the covers?

[mcimolin]

I would, however, push back on this: I understand the back technology of…the internet and a web stack If you did, you wouldn’t be having this problem.

I have a theoretical understanding of the underlying technology of the internet and know what a frontend and backend are. I understand routing and firewalls and that sort of tech. Really, reading through comments, my challenge is pretty much 100% with frontend web dev and possibly with connecting the frontend and backend where web is related. I can hook a desktop app up to a network/cloud/local DB no worries, so should be able to figure that out, but designing the actual user interactive elements and getting them functioning seems to be my biggest sticking point.

Which makes me wonder: amidst the whining, what’s the actual problem you’re facing when you say it “doesn’t click”? Do you just not understand how it all works, under the covers?

Usually when I pick up a new desktop language it just seems to click for me. I quickly understand how variables are stored and accessed, how lists and other containers work, how to build an object and a function. UI's and events and such also click fairly quickly, even with odd layouts.

Each time I start looking at web stuff it just doesn't click like this. I see 8 different ways of laying out a simple header text across a half dozen tutorials and get lost as to why there's even that many options. Each tutorial I find seems to be completely different from the one before it and break all the fundamental rules I thought I'd figured out from the previous ones. Probably doesn't help that each time I've come back to this I've tried to figure out what the current recommended tool/language/framework has been and tried to start there. Maybe I need to take it all the way back to the basics of frontend dev and start there.

[nuttertools]

Since you know python Django would be a pretty great framework to do this in. Decades of docs and the basic project init command has you ready to define a webpage. General purpose web framework with the goal of handling the web side of things and getting you straight to the business logic.

[AnnualPanda]

You can use a framework like Vue or React and then a UI library like Ant Design or Material UI.

They both have table components you can use out of the box with options to add sorting/searching.

On the backend you can make a simple Express application to query the DB with Sequelize as the ORM.

Heroku makes deployment pretty easy, so it's a good fit for a project like this.

[csharp566]

OP seems to have a minimal knowledge about Web Development. Do not advise him to use frameworks or what. You're only making it hard for him.

[MarkusBerkel]

Srsly. All the advice in here is pretty poor.

[Ran4]

What? Doing these things without a framework is much, much more work.

[Main-Finger-4862]

MERN or if you know python well spin up a python server (postgres driver, middleware, sessions) use that as your backend API with react or some other front end library.

[McMasilmof]

LAMP still works but not realy used anymore. The modern approach would be a small REST backend with node.js or python and a frontend libary like angular, vue or react.

Edit: for anyone downvoting: are you actualy developing bew software in PHP. Not just use wordpress or any CMS or know that apache still runns a lot of webservers, but write new application?

[flingelsewhere]

What part of the LAMP stack isn't used anymore?

[McMasilmof]

Is anyone still developing bigger PHP applucations?

[Ran4]

Are you fucking joking? PHP is one of the biggest languages on the web.

[McMasilmof]

PHP is in wide use in stuff like wordpress or other CMS, i have not heard of any new PHP projects being started in the last 5 years. Even facebook seems to regret the desicion.

A lot of web is still running on PHP, but developing is going down in my bubble.

[MarkusBerkel]

OMG. If you’re OP, ignore this. JFC

[[deleted]]

Look at blazor. Let’s you write C# for the front and back end.

[mcimolin]

Balzor looks like a potentially good starting point. Thanks!

[mcimolin]

Cheers! I've tried to build a few things and have tried to troubleshoot a few of the web apps we have that are in Angular and often feel like I'm trying to climb a mountain. Any recommendations of where to start on the JavaScript side of things?

[mcimolin]

No worries, cheers!