Understanding Application Architectures

Submitted by gwagner on Wed, 08/24/2016 - 19:32

As in all cases of designing a complex system, no matter if a new building, a new space shuttle, a new computer or a new software application is to be designed, an architecture provides a kind of master plan for defining the structure of the system.

What Is Reactive Programming and how Does It Work?

Submitted by gwagner on Tue, 07/19/2016 - 01:47

The term "reactive programming" refers to a programming style based on handling "events" of all sorts. App developers are familiar with simple user interface events, such as mouse clicks, and know how to deal with them using their favorite programming language. But there are also other kinds of events an app may have to deal with, such as a state change of an object, an incoming message, the completion of an asynchronuous operation or an exception/error event.

Web Development Pitfall No.1: Confusing a DOM collection with a JS array

Submitted by gwagner on Thu, 12/10/2015 - 03:44

Summary

Don't confuse a DOM collection with a JS array: Array functions, such as the forEach looping method, cannot be applied to a DOM collection!

For instance, when you retrieve all rows of an HTML table element, you get an HTMLCollection, which is an array-like object, but not an instance of Array, and therefore the following code does not succeed because the Array method forEach is not defined for an HTMLCollection like myTableEl.rows:

Goodbye Boilerplate!

Submitted by gwagner on Wed, 11/11/2015 - 21:55

If you'd like to learn about how to get rid of boilerplate code, read the slides of Gerd Wagner's talk Model-based development of web apps with mODELvIEWjs given on 3 November 2015 at the CodeMotion conference in Berlin.

Celebrate George Boole's 200th Birthday

Submitted by gwagner on Mon, 11/02/2015 - 13:22

You probably know what Boolean operators and truth values are. But do you know George Boole?

NEW: JavaScript Summary

Submitted by gwagner on Fri, 10/23/2015 - 00:29

The first summary article has been published on our new page Summaries, Cheat Sheets and Posters.

Architectures for the Web of Things

Submitted by gwagner on Wed, 10/14/2015 - 09:48

In the Web of Things (WoT), special communication networks composed of sensor nodes, actuator nodes and service nodes form the basis for new types of web applications, which are directly connected to the real world via sensors and actuators, and can be private, such as smart home apps, personal robotics apps and factory control applications, or public, such as air pollution monitoring systems and city parking management systems.

Creating HTML tables with JavaScript/DOM methods

Submitted by gwagner on Tue, 10/06/2015 - 16:16

The proper way of creating an HTML table with JavaScript and inserting it into the HTML body element is using the DOM methods insertRow and insertCell, as in the following code example:

What does it need to be not only a good coder, but become a great app developer?

Submitted by gwagner on Tue, 09/29/2015 - 16:36

If you want to become a great app developer, it's not sufficient that you master your favorite programming technologies. It's essential that you understand all basic concepts and techniques, not just in programming, but also in information management.

A programming (or software development) technology typically combines a programming language (such as JavaScript, Java or C#) with a framework/library for user interface and data storage programming (such as BackboneJS, JSF or ASP.NET MVC).

Defining and Using Classes in JavaScript

Submitted by gwagner on Mon, 08/31/2015 - 17:38

The concept of a class is fundamental in object-oriented programming. Objects instantiate (or are classified by) a class. A class defines the properties and methods (as a blueprint) for the objects that instantiate it. Having a class concept is essential for being able to implement a data model in the form of model classes within a Model-View-Container (MVC) architecture.

gwagner's blog