Welcome!
Back in the early days of web development, web pages were simple. They used HTML and “web developers” typed in that HTML using powerful text editing programs such as Notepad. Most of these files were static files stored on a web server, and were rendered out to the client very quickly. Soon after, CGI was invented. This was pretty cool too. An HTML request could be handled by an EXE program, and the web server would pass in a string of parameters or a path to a file containing those parameters. Combined with HTML forms, this made web pages much more useful. Life was good in those days.
Today, we have “web applications.” A Web Application is a program that your PM wants to look and feel like a normal Windows application, but goes completely against the entire design of HTML. Web Applications are littered with script, dynamic content that changes without refreshing the page, behaviors, and bizarre hackery that fetches new data from the server without refreshing the page. Content is almost never static, and even the frameworks are designed to mimic standard Windows form based programming. This style of software design is half programming, half web design, and half voodoo. Developers who don’t understand the stateless architecture of HTTP are usually lost, and I’ve still yet to meet a programmer who understands both web design and computer science.
This blog is dedicated to all things related to Web Applications, and specifically those built on the ASP.NET framework which is the most un-web like thing I’ve ever seen. I’m a strong believer in good architecture and understanding how things work under the covers, so I put strong emphasis on doing things “the right way” and avoid hacks whenever possible.
Enjoy!
Mike Christensen: Web Dev Guy
