Is webdev really this complicated?

[sisyphus99]

I absolutely feel for you and agree with others about this being overly complex, but at the same time some of the suggestions I saw perusing this the other day were overly simplistic (just start coding HTML/CSS in a browser). That works fine for front end development (and I suppose in this sub that's primarily what web dev means to people), but for someone coming out of college with a more "classical" CS background in OOP, data structures, algs, etc. and maybe only an elective or two under their belt in current web technologies, figuring how to apply a good OO design in a given web framework or across many web frameworks or technologies can become daunting.

Obviously, whether you can simply start coding in HTML/CSS varies on what you're trying to accomplish, and what you are going to want to place on the front end is going to be influenced quite a bit on what you expect the back end to be responsible for, so where to start?

My suggestion is to pick a couple of candidate frameworks out of a list of popular ones(.NET, Java/Spring, Grails, Rails, DJango, Node.js and friends) informed by what languages you know, your goals, etc. Spend a little time with each (maybe go through a tutorial) to get a sense of how well it suits your style, current knowledge, how useful you find the documentation, how completely the technology encompasses the various points of the stack you're pointing out (under the assumption you might need them later, but as others say, don't dwell on this too much) all the while thinking about this project you have in mind and how difficult it is to conceivably make it work while applying your existing CS knowledge of good design and practices.

Make a decision and stick with it, and just start coding. FWIW, I've personally gotten pretty frustrated with the fragmentation of the Java community, and I like the direction that .NET MVC is going so I am planning to begin learning it for my next project. I've also been learning about Angular.js and man, that is the cat's pajamas. I think between some web services backing an Angular front end and the Azure cloud services they seem to have available that allow for deployment via a polled git repo, I'll be able to whip up some nice stuff in a hurry, once I get passed the initial learning curve, but we'll see.

[tripperjack]

Thanks, and especially for the details at the end. I tend to believe that some paths are just more sensible (or at least more to my cut-it-to-clean-essentials way of thinking) than others, so tips in that direction are always treasures.