I am an experienced Java programmer, and I want to create a complex web applicat
ID: 646629 • Letter: I
Question
I am an experienced Java programmer, and I want to create a complex web application requiring dynamic pages, drawings, etc (take SO as an example). Do I have to learn javascript/html in order to create such an application?
It is not that I don't want to learn another language (I've done this before), but technology on the javascript environment seems to change so fast that when you finish learning one framework it is already obsolete. I have checked a number of java framework for web development (spring, play), but not deeply. So can these frameworks (or other possible java frameworks that I'm not aware of) be used without learning html/javascript? I also have some python experience. So if I can do the app in python it is also an option.
Explanation / Answer
You don't have to learn JavaScript and HTML to create web applications.
But you will.
If you really want to write webapps in mostly Java, have a look at the Google Web Toolkit, which does vast amounts of Java to JS, and can satisfy a good chunk of the code needed for a webapp. Django is a similar framework for Python.
And if you really want to avoid writing HTML there are vast amounts of templates and What-you-see-is-what-you-get editors out there.
But you see, regardless of the abstraction framework and HMTL templates you start with, at some point you'll be dissatisfied with the presentation. And so you'll get enough HTML/JS on your hands to change the one tiny little thing you want. And another thing. And another.
And that's how you'll learn. That's how a lot of us learned, back in the era of point-and-click website makers like Geocities. After a while, if you're serious about the web, you'll learn the languages of the web, intentionally or not.
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