During the late nineties I was making various interactive/dynamic websites using the then standard technologies: HTML, PHP, Perl, Mysql, and a tiny bit of CSS. This was the time when Javascript was really only used for form field validation and to spawn popups (Ajax was not yet around), when all layout was done using borderless table/tr/td HTML elements, when there were no mobile devices and all you had to care about was one or two screen resolutions and basically two browsers: Netscape and MSIE. Since then I have been pursuing my IT career in a different area. But sometimes I still find myself wanting to setup a website every now and then. But in the little free time I have available, I stumble upon all kinds of web technologies and frameworks: JQuery, Node.js, Ruby on rails, AngularJS, Backbone.JS, Django, Bootstrap, to name a few. Ofcourse all have their purpose, weaknesses and strengths. But after work and family, there isn't much time left for exploring and trying new things. Maybe other people have already made this journey and can share their experiences? What would be the best way for a nineties web developer to update his knowledge and skills?
[+] [-] brudgers|10 years ago|reply
Many of current batch of tools were developed to meet the needs of engineering teams at scale: e.g. Angular @ Google and React @ Facebook. Their heritage is not "hobbyist programmer" friendly. They are great if the hobby is reading about technology. But many many of those opinions embedded in Django and Rails only become natural once a person is deeply familiar with the culture of their communities.
My advice, do the simplest thing that will work and make something. Pick tools that require a lower level of commitment to an overall architecture as the need arises. Stay out of silos and rabbit holes.
Good luck.
[+] [-] userbinator|10 years ago|reply
You may notice that when late 90s/early 2000s sites get posted to HN, there are often a set of comments on how quick-to-load and readable they are.
[+] [-] davewasthere|10 years ago|reply
If I teleported here from the 90s, first thing I'd need to wrap my head around is how HTML and CSS have changed. I'd be learning a responsive framework (or even hand-rolling it, so you know how it works) like bootstrap. And doing a very basic website.
And if html5 & responsive css aren't enough to wrap your head around at once, I'd create a github account, and start with github pages. That'll let you use the static site generator Jekyll. The combination of all three will do pretty much all you need for 90% of the sites out there.
After that, then I'd look at a stack that lets you have some degree of interactivity and persistence in order to build web apps.... But for now, clean responsive websites would be the way forward.
[+] [-] voltagex_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachrose|10 years ago|reply
I'm sure many people will tell you about their negative experiences and how writing these kinds of "tests" are slow or misleading or a waste of time. But I would say that deciding what your software does--even in an abstract and gradual fashion--gives you tremendous freedom in knowing that all the other choices are just implementation details of a larger design. (As the parent says, a "lower level of commitment".)
[1] https://cucumber.io
[+] [-] blhack|10 years ago|reply
You don't need hipster.js to build a website. You can still build websites that can be used by millions of people using PHP, mysql, and HTML.
Lots and lots of people will tell you to learn hipster.js, and will imply that if you aren't using something written by 3 20 year olds in a coffee shop during a hackathon, that you can't get The Scale.
But the reality is that people have been getting The Scale with the tools that you already know since you learned them.
Here is a relevant blog post: http://thingist.com/t/item/21434/
[+] [-] habitue|10 years ago|reply
It's also wrong. There is a spectrum from early adopter to head-buried-in-the-sand cobol developer, and most people would agree there are trade-offs to being on either end.
Suggesting to someone who has been out of the game for 15 years that basically nothing has changed is doing him a disservice and not answering the question. He's asking about what he's missing, it's better to let him in on it and let him decide for himself if it's really just the same old shit repackaged.
[+] [-] misja111|10 years ago|reply
In 2016, chances are that your website will also be used on tablets and smartphones. Those users want a fast interactive user experience. Which most likely means a single page application with a substantial amount of JS code running on the client side and an Ajax interface to the backend.
To become a good web programmer you need to get some proficiency in Javascript and HTML5. And you need to get an idea about how to deal with the asynchronicity of Ajax calls in an elegant way in your code. That doesn't mean you have to start using Angular or React, but it is a good idea anyway to look at some modern frameworks to get a feeling for which concepts work well and which don't.
[+] [-] igravious|10 years ago|reply
Of the tech that the OP listed two things are _not_ hipster.js front end libraries or frameworks, and I wish I had mentioned them in my other response below.
1) Bootstrap: This is a huge productivity boost for CSS. You get a responsive layouts, a standard way to do grid layouts and it papers over browser differences and compensates for older browsers. OP says they don't use much CSS, that really doesn't cut the mustard in 2016. And, hey, Bootstrap is made by those guys at Twitter† (not 3 20-year-olds in a coffee shop as you so amusingly put it!) so they probably know a thing or two about UI layout and design. I'd be interested to know what % of websites now use Bootstrap or something inspired by it. Bootstrap was released as open-source in August 2011, it'll be 5-years-old tech this year.
2) jQuery: This is a huge productivity boost for JS. Of course you can use that hipster tool Vanilla JS (http://vanilla-js.com/) but jQuery is so concise, the syntax and semantics are well thought out, again papers over browser differences. You can chain operations together. The way it does selectors is brilliant. John Resig basically had some sort of divine inspiration. That fact that he was 14(?) at the time of writing it... well... that's how one learns to be humble in life. Sure raw JS is going to blow jQuery out of the water perf-wise but going by what OP says, dev time is what we're optimizing for here, jQuery will be plenty fast. It's used* on what, ~ 70%..90% of websites? I'm surprised a version of it isn't built into browsers yet. jQuery is 2006 tech, it's a decade old this year. (Also released as open-source in August, hmm).
† and Angular is Google tech, React is Facebook tech, Rails is 37signals tech but all have have huge open-source communities.
* http://trends.builtwith.com/javascript
[+] [-] cpayne|10 years ago|reply
The only thing I'd add is to choose one of those technologies (jQuery / Node / Angular / Whatever!) and learn it (reasonably) well.
I can't tell you how many times I've used Pluralsight to bone up on a particular technology...
[+] [-] herbst|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hiram112|10 years ago|reply
Compared to the typical opinion pieces these days, what a breath of fresh air!
[+] [-] dwd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SignMeTheHELLUp|10 years ago|reply
HTML, Javascript and CSS are still extremely important and they have come a long way since 1990. Forget everything you knew about them and research their state in 2016. You have a lot to learn, but you'll find all three more powerful and expressive today than they were in 1990.
There is currently a big shift in the way clients want their websites to work. In the past (and present) clients were happy with simple HTML pages that were generated on the server and sent down to the client for every action the user performs. Now and in the future, we're shifting towards "Single page apps" which are Javascript centric applications that store page templates client-side and talk to the back end through APIs. Page transitions are emulated with Javascript routing libraries. This means the frontends are more complex but can provide a richer, more interactive experience. To see the cutting edge of this technique search for React + Redux.
Backend development is still important. People generally converge under a simple set of rules for backend development called Model-View-Controller. This is a design pattern that dictates how requests are delegated into your business layer. Investigate MVC as well as Domain Driven Design to get yourself up to speed.
Understand that there is an enormous amount of garbage out there right now. Some things to be extremely wary of are NoSQL databases (they have very limited use cases but are marketed as a silver bullet) and NodeJs (a backend server which executes Javascript but has more than a few shortcomings). Be extremely skeptical of any advice you receive over the internet. There are too many people dispensing advice with no actual credibility because of the ease of access to the Internet.
The best thing to do is to work with some talented developers and build your own network from them. A lot of developers on the leading edge use Twitter and often drop useful bits of advice to keep you on the right track.
[+] [-] joeyspn|10 years ago|reply
> Wow, there is a lot of awful advice in this thread.
[+] [-] adambratt|10 years ago|reply
And I'd just add that there's no need to jump into a new backend language if you used PHP years ago. Sure it's not as robust or structured but for a hobbyist it can do everything you need and there's still plenty of jobs for it if you want to graduate to an MVC framework.
[+] [-] golergka|10 years ago|reply
NoSQL is very, very, very bad when your data is conceptually relational.
On the other hand, when you really have individual documents which can have different layout and don't have much interactions between them, NoSQL can be pretty awesome.
So, just understand what kind of system are you working with before choosing one approach over another.
[+] [-] anonx|10 years ago|reply
Are we? I expect 2016-2017 to be a turning point in the history of client-side web-development due to WebAssembly. Is it just my wet fantasy?
[+] [-] gaius|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfarnsworth|10 years ago|reply
You need to first define what your goal is. Do you want to become a full-time front-end developer? Do you want to be a full-stack, etc. Different aspects will require a different subset.
First and foremost, you will need to figure out how to get more free-time so that you can master a whole slew of technologies that have come and gone in the last 20 years. This is a cold, hard fact. You have a lot of ground to make up for, and if you can't even start up a web site, it's going to be tough getting legitimacy as a modern front-end developer.
I would start off with the fundamentals, ie. HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Knowing how to build things from scratch, using AJAX, etc, from pure Javascript without frameworks will help you understand why some frameworks are better than others. Then you can migrate to JQuery and Bootstrap. Once you have mastered these, you can then go on to whatever current framework best suits you, but you'll be able to understand the current challenges best.
[+] [-] joeyspn|10 years ago|reply
> But after work and family, there isn't much time left
If you want to ship ASAP with little time investment, IMO nothing beats Meteor. Skills required: HTML, CSS, JS.
I've built projects with PHP, Rails, Django, Node, Angular, etc ... and Meteor is the framework I recommend to newcomers. Ok, you're not exactly a newcomer, but clearly you've been disconnected many years and you don't have enough free time to learn new tools/languages. You'll need a lot of abstractions (features, deployment, db interfacing, best practices, etc)...
Meteor will help you with this, a lot... And the most important thing: it's a lot of fun!
https://www.meteor.com/
0,02
[+] [-] sergiotapia|10 years ago|reply
If you decide to use Meteor use: http://guide.meteor.com/
[+] [-] vskarine|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonyfox|10 years ago|reply
Meteor is in fact the fastest way to achieve a webapp nowadays. You can learn it in a weekend if you want to, and drafting highly dynamic interfaces is a breeze.
If you want to scale later, in terms of code complexity as well as runtime performance and so on, Meteor isn't that good, but having thousands of concurrent users is a luxury problem to have.
To get an idea out the door, Meteor.
(I'm a fullstack dev who has worked with dozens of languages and even more frameworks, and went through all the popular frontend tech's since jquery, so: been there, done stuff)
[+] [-] ofcapl_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rutigs|10 years ago|reply
NodeJS or Python or Ruby
These are your fairly standard backend choices. They all have minimalist and full featured frameworks for building applications including but not limited to Express, Koa, Ruby On Rails, Sinatra, Django, Flask. Go is also fairly easy to get going quickly in. There is not really a wrong choice here for a personal project.
In the case that you want a single page application that works with the backend you made with the previous choices:
Backbone or Angular or React+Redux(any flux implementation will do)
These are for consuming your backend and any of them will do. Learning Angular is its own thing despite it being javascript. React+Redux seems a little odd by embedding html in your javascript but once you get the hang of it it's pretty neat. Don't know much about Backbone but I've heard its fairly easy to use.
Bootstrap is pretty easy to learn and use to make your website responsive with minimal effort.
Heroku is by far the easiest platform for deployment and horizontal scaling however it can get pricey quickly. AWS has a similar solution with Elastic Beanstalk but I've got no experience to share with that. If you want all the control (but more work) you can go with Digital Ocean for a 5$ VPS. Unlike Heroku you will have do all admin work like installing necessary packages, databases, and configuring a web-server but you can control every little bit of your application without having to spend more than $5 a month.
[+] [-] matdrewin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wsc981|10 years ago|reply
I intend to learn RoR in the nearby future as well, since I'd like to do more remote work and less "on location" work (which I currently do as iOS dev).
[+] [-] piratebroadcast|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharemywin|10 years ago|reply
I would start on the front end and
I would start with looking into Bootstrap and jquery. And look at using PHP to deliver the webservice data to jquery. http://tutorialzine.com/2015/01/shoutbox-php-jquery/
------
I would also google some MVC PHP tutorals to get some idea of how MVC works since alot of modern frameworks are modeled after it.
----
next pick a javascript framework to make a SPA here's some tutorials(middle of the page) on using angularjs with php: http://www.angularcode.com/
-----------
now your ready to swap out php for another server technology. nodejs, RoR, whatever.
---------------------
[+] [-] jakejake|10 years ago|reply
Once you have that in your pocket you'll be ready to try any of the new js frameworks that are being mentioned here.
[+] [-] RikNieu|10 years ago|reply
1. Learn plain old JavaScript(https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript), paying particular attention to both ES5 and ES6. Most of the latest frameworks work with JS as its base, so if you know JS you'll likely find it easier to figure them out.
2. Learn CSS(it's easy, shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours) and then dive into SASS or LESS.
3. Take some time to learn how Node and it's package manager npm work.
4. For the more back-endish choices, I'd have a look at getting a basic understanding of NodeJS, RoR and Django. One of these should appeal to you more than the others and I'd just pick one and stick to it.
[+] [-] juliankrispel|10 years ago|reply
That's kind of hilarious.
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|10 years ago|reply
Also https://www.codeschool.com/paths/ has some quite good tutorials, albeit a bit hand-holdy.
https://jsfiddle.net/ and other REPLs are great when trying new things.
I'd also learn to use Git with GitHub - source control is a relative newcomer to web dev but is de rigeur IMO.
[+] [-] juliankrispel|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vortico|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SignMeTheHELLUp|10 years ago|reply
Not if you want to get hired. We've moved on from that simple model. I don't like it either but ignoring the fact that things are changing is a good way to end up unemployed.
[+] [-] patcheudor|10 years ago|reply
Just to be clear and ensure everyone else understands. Javascript should validate input syntax and make decisions that don't need to be forced onto users. As an example, validate a credit-card matches mod 10 and automatically recognize if it's Visa, Mastercard, etc. Nothing drives me nuts like messing up my card-number only to have to go through an entire HTTP request & response cycle to find out.
What we don't want developers to do is ONLY validate client-side lest they open their back-end to injection vulnerabilities like XSS, SQLi, and CMDi or even name your own price vulnerabilities like we saw early on in the ecommerce space.
[+] [-] subpixel|10 years ago|reply
1) Focus on HTML/CSS and use a static site solution (github pages + jekyll is hard to beat). When you need more, learn the JS necessary to make it happen, and perhaps move beyond static and into more JS-front-end territory as needed.
2) Tap into your PHP memories and take a look at Laravel and specifically laracasts.com. I'm not proselytizing (I actually don't use php or Laravel), but it's a really solid framework with a vibrant and heterogenous community. It may not where the cool kids are, but it's a great way to be productive and it seems to be constantly improving.
Good luck!
[+] [-] codingdave|10 years ago|reply
Learn all the updates to CSS first, to understand how pages are structured without tables. That will help you to move on to jQuery, which will in turn help you understand how JavaScript is used nowadays to work with the page. Once you are that far, you can pursue node.js to get up to speed on server-side JS.
After that, you should be as caught up as you need to be, and will better be able to evaluate all the other frameworks and languages out there, and set your own direction.
[+] [-] diezge|10 years ago|reply
Spend this time updating your knowledge base via. tech news, tutorial/e-course sites such as Udemy/Pluralsight (if you learn best by video-and-code) or official textual documentation/guides otherwise.
Learn about version control (Git), HTML5/CSS3, ECMAscript 6... PHP and MySQL are still fine. Read guides about modern practices such as mobile-first development, testing via. Chrome developer tools, file minification/concatenation etc. Just learn a little each morning and don't feel overwhelmed!
Consider the points of the following link and don't worry about the "flavour of the week" libraries so much and you'll be fine -> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46760/74224
[+] [-] fallous|10 years ago|reply
When you address the problem, don't immediately jump to the newest framework/stack that claims to solve it but instead try and use the majority of your existing skills and knowledge with one or two modifications... even if they are "out of date." Going through the effort of adapting existing skills allows you to better understand the underlying problems as well as re-live (in blessedly compressed time) the iterations that occurred to arrive at the current accepted solutions. There's a lot of wisdom to be found in taking that journey.
Learning the "why" of things is far more important than just acquiring the operational skills for a given technology.
[+] [-] wonkaWonka|10 years ago|reply
HTML, PHP & Mysql are all still quite very relevant.
Replace: [table/tr/td] with [div/ul/li] and substitute the borderless tables with the CSS3 box model and you're TOTALLY up-to-date. No lie.
Right-click > Inspect Element > Console > console.log will get you a long way. Treat the JS console as your new client-side command line. Just start typing in function names, and see what autocompletes. Treat JavaScript functions as if they were executable binaries within a shell window. Use jQuery to traverse the DOM with CSS selectors. This behavior is well-supported in pretty much every current, modern desktop browser.
Everything else is quite honestly a fad, and replete with over-engineering pissing contests. I'd add more opinionated snark to this last part, but that would dilute the important parts of this comment, which I do hope reach you well.
[+] [-] nroose|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mei0Iesh|10 years ago|reply
Otherwise, everything applicable from back then still is today. Any time anyone mentions PHP on forums like this, there's always fashion-conscious people who jump in to attack it. But I'm still building brand new websites based on it, and people still express their gratitude, never once saying there's any problem because the site uses PHP.
MySQL is still going strong, and there's some alternatives that are compatible, like Percona and Maria.
JavaScript is the same. There's all these frameworks like there are for PHP, but I ignore all that. I never understood why I'd be better off using someone else's virtual language on top of a language. I just use bare JavaScript, and it works the same to me as it did back then. Still have to worry about differences between browsers, but instead of Netscape and IE, it's stuff like Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. A framework can make that easier, but it can make others things more difficult, and it's better to keep dependence on JS minimal anyways.
What I'm getting at is, I don't know why you need to update anything. If you're trying to get a specific job, then you need to use what they do. But for just building things in your free time that work on modern web browsers, you already know what you need to know. You could probably even run the same exact version of server and authoring tools you did before, and it should display fine in the latest web browsers.
It's different if you want to build something like a mobile app, or Windows software, because those platforms changed significantly since the '90s. There's languages now that didn't exist then, and new tools you've never seen before.
But on the web, any text editor, HTML, and any language you want for the backend is fine. Just like I still write .sh scripts, and they get the job done.
It's more important to spend that time on family, and your career. Since the stuff you already know still works, there's not much need to use anything else. Unless you're worried about what the kids think, and how they'll judge you.
[+] [-] SignMeTheHELLUp|10 years ago|reply
"What I'm getting at is, I don't know why you need to update anything"
Shocking advice. There is a huge amount to learn. Any developer coming from the 1990s needs to re-learn all their technologies or they are going to have a very stressful time delivering anything appealing to users expectations in 2016.
"Since the stuff you already know still works, there's not much need to use anything else"
This kind of mentality leads to becoming deadwood and unemployment. Developers must keep learning especially with the rate of change of technology over the past 5 or so years.
[+] [-] sdegutis|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Diti|10 years ago|reply
Perl and MySQL are strong choices and there must be a lot of big companies out there who still use them because it works for them. Startups always want the cutting-edge technology (NoSQL), but sometimes a good old RDBMS like MySQL is the way to go.
Inspired by: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10084449
[+] [-] Isofarro|10 years ago|reply
Get comfortable with that, and then create a route that sends back information in JSON instead of HTML. That will then give you something to try Ajax against.
Also, learn CSS. The Web switched to CSS for layout in 2001-2004. Have a read through 24ways.org -- their advent calendar for each year, it's nice bit size bits about modern web development. CSS for layout. Responsive design (basically adapting to various browser window sizes and screen resolutions). If you want to learn how to lay out a page in CSS this is essential, but if you want to get up to speed just building stuff, then taking something like Twitter's Bootstrap is a handy starting point.
Also, jQuery. Learn about using events properly, and keeping JavaScript in a separate file and hooking into the browser/document events you are interested in. jQuery is the starting point for getting your head around Unobtrusive JavaScript.
If you are interested in getting your head around static HTML/CSS sites first, it might be worth pulling up a Jekyll tutorial and following that. (Jekyll is a static site generator. Markdown documents rendered as static HTML using the Liquid tempting language)