Computer Fundamentals

Computer Fundamentals
Understanding Web Development

I have taught web development in various forms over the past many years. This website contains information from courses that I taught including my notes, transcripts, insights, and other material. It has been edited to make sure that it is readable, but all of the content is derived from my own course content. Courses include CMU 95-881 Web Application Development, CMU 95-882 Enterprise Web Development, Pitt CS/CoE 1520 Computer Languages for Web Development, Pitt CS 134 Web Site Design and Development, and IUP COSC 415 Internet Architectures. Comments have been turned off, but you can feel free to contact me personally.

There is nothing special about the posts on the front page, as it is simply whatever Wordpress wants, which is typically the most recent items that I’ve uploaded.

  • Front End Application

    Now we have these lightweight applications that don’t need to be installed. One thing I like to point out is that I often talk about the calculator space. The reason for that is that a lot of applications can almost be thought of as calculators. You’re doing some computation—some programming—and getting a result. Now, we’re…

  • Online Calculator

    We can also have something like an online calculator that uses client–server and client‑side programming. I don’t want to have to go back to the server every single time just to do a simple computation.

  • Client Server Application

    Client–server applications already existed back in Web 1.0. The reason we moved toward doing programming in places other than just the server is because the technology changed. The network changed. People started using mobile devices. All of that shifted how we build things. So the classic client–server application, where everything happens on the server, is…