Manning is planning to release a free book sampler that would include chapters from different books covering modern Web development process. They asked me to select books/chapters and write a short intro, which I did and decided to share this with you.
The modern world of Web development requires software engineers who are well versed in multiple disciplines. Of course, familiarity with the JavaScript syntax is a must. As Atwood’s law states, “Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript”. Well, maybe not in the pure JavaScript, but in its more productive superset called TypeScript.
Web developers use frameworks and/or libraries to avoid re-inventing the wheel while working on applications. While many people are still happy with jQuery, more progressive developers are debating: Angular or React? This comparison is wrong because React is a library while Angular is a framework with batteries included. But Angular and React are the most popular tools in the Web development ecosystem today.
There is a trend to develop applications using principles of reactive programming. The data consumer subscribes to the data stream that’s pushed to the consumer only when the data is available. This is an alternative to the polling model that requires the client to make periodic requests for data, which may or may not not be available. The RxJS library implements the push model via observable streams of data. This library offers you a variety of chainable operators (functions) that handle and transform the data en route.
Making your application available on mobile devices is important. Will your Web application look good on a small screen or you’d better create separate native applications for each mobile platform? There is is a third approach to create so called hybrid applications that run a Web container inside your mobile device translating HTML elements into their native counterparts. Actually there is a forth approach that suggests reusing the most of the code base of your Web app while compiling the UI portion into native mobile components before the app is deployed. NativeScript is one of the frameworks that does it.
Most Web applications would need to provide login and user authentication/authorization. The chances are that you’ve been offered by some apps to login using their FaceBook or Twitter account. Usually such authorization is implemented using OAuth protocol. You can set up authorization using privately installed OAuth server that fits nicely with RESTful Web services.
This book sampler will give you a taste of multiple facets of the modern development of Web and mobile applications. Some of the books are already released while others are still in the works, but you can reading drafts via Manning’s MEAP program.
For this sampler I’ve suggested selected chapters from the following books:
2. Angular 2 Development with TypeScript
4. NativeScript in Action MEAP
This is not a complete list and there are other fine books being released by many book publishers. Here’s my message to you
“Read.Study.Write.Repeat.”
Happy reading!
yakovfain.com 