CR: Stack II Topics Outline

Learning Objectives

• learn basics of modern web applications?
• basics of dynamic languages
  • first class functions
  • functional programming concepts (non-mutability)
• basics of databases
  • data representation
  • query languages
• basics of distributed applications
  • latency vs. bandwidth
  • reliability concerns
  • state vs. stateless

Weekly Topics

• Modern web architecture
• HTML, CSS: markup languages
• client-server, stateless vs. stateful servers, HTTP (cookies & other state)
• Server-side scripting: PHP
• Database schemas
• Database query languages & semantics (logic)
• Dynamic memory management (garbage collection)
• lexical and dynamic scoping
• functions as first-class objects, functions that generate other functions
• eval, JSON
• domain-specific languages: SQL
• embedded interpreters
• scalability for data: NoSQL approaches, database caches
• mapreduce

Assignments

1. PHP/HTML introduction (dynamic generation of web pages)
2. PHP & Databases: simple SQL
3. RPC: REST, SOAP, legacy
4. runtime generation of client code: PHP->JavaScript (AJAX) + DB
5. first-class functions for dynamic code generation (JavaScript) + DB
6. closures, scoping + DB
7. JavaScript interpreter in Java (Rhino?)
8. scalable database? (BigTable-like?)