Fundamentals of Web Applications (Winter 2013)

Administration

The course outline for this course is here.

Course discussions will be on Piazza. You can sign up here. Note that Piazza has a "groups" function that can help you find partners for your project. Also note that piazza asks for your carleton.ca email address, so you can't directly sign up with any anonymous email address. If you wish to sign up using an anonymous/throw away email address, please email Prof. Somayaji or a TA and they can enroll that email address manually.

You should get an account on this wiki so you can add to it. Email Prof. Somayaji to get one with your preferred username and email address to which a password should be sent. (Note this is not a requirement.)

Resources

JavaScript

You should go out and learn the basics of JavaScript on your own. While we will discuss the language in class, much of that discussion will make more sense if you've exposed yourself to the language. You should also get basic exposure to standard web technologies.

The easiest way to get started with JavaScript and get basic understanding of web technologies is to go through the interactive lessons on Code Academy. I suggest you go through their JavaScript, Web Fundamentals, and jQuery tracks. They shouldn't take you very long to do given that you already know how to program.

You should get access to JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crawford. Read it. It is available through O'Reilly, Safari Books Online, and the regular online bookstores. I've even seen an interactive version of it which includes an embedded JavaScript interpreter. (link?) You can get access to Safari Books Online through the Carleton Library (four concurrent users only) or partial access by becoming a member of IEEE Computer Society.

Crawford also has a lot of online resources on JavaScript, including videos of talks he's given that cover much of the content in his book. Look at his JavaScript page and this page of his videos.

Another good book is Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming by Marijn Haverbeke. A version of this book is available online for free. The for-sale version is apparently updated and edited.

Lectures

Date	Topic
Jan. 8	Introduction
Jan. 8	Symbols

Humor/Quotes

Bobby Tables, a funny example of SQL injection.

"Scalability is always the answer in this class." -Alexis

"First axiom of this class is web apps suck." -User:soma