Difference between web application and website?

Question

I work as an Android developer until about a week when I move on to developing web applications. Now, when I ask people how to get started with the same goal, I get the usual answer to learning js, HTML5, CSS, Ajax, etc. So, I stopped in detail, and I was quite happy for some time to learn new things and get used to the idea of ​​working on web development. So far this has been the whole theory with me, exhuming my js on w3Schools, but now I would like to start working with a few exercises on developing web applications. The problem is that I seem to be confused between the idea of ​​web development and web application development!

So, here are probably the dumbest questions for some of you are professionals, but I hope you take some time to explain the difference to someone like me! :)

Q1. Did I crack my head on the wrong topics to start developing web applications?

Q2. What is the difference between web apps and website?

Q3. What exactly do I need to start preparing for web application development?

Q4. What would be a good IDE (if required) to get started? (I was working on android, so the eclipse plugin was extremely useful in my learning phases)

I hope I have raised all the right questions here. I am completely new to this, and they give me very little time and opportunity to prepare, and as a trainee you need to adapt very quickly to any environment that you find yourself in, so I hope you can point me in the direction where I hope there is accelerated learning of "web application development" :)

thanks

Answer 1

There are many server-side technologies and platforms that you can use to develop advanced web applications such as ASP.NET , J2EE , PHP . > etc. But no matter what you use here, it is “compiled” to an HTML page before being sent to a client, which may contain more or less of the various web technologies that you have studied. And you can always directly encode HTML , js , css , etc. In perfect harmony with the server-side components.

Answers to your question:

• Q1: No matter what server technology you use, it is always useful to have a good knowledge of the technologies that you have already learned.
• Q2: There is no apparent difference. This is basically a degree of difficulty. A site with complex functionality is a web application, and a more or less static informative site is a web site.
• Q3: You started on the right side. It's important to understand the concepts of HTML, CSS, and javascript when developing for the web.
• Q4: I really don’t know android and eclipse, so I don’t know which of the IDE would be best for you. Others are likely to answer this better.

Answer 2

I will bite; -)

Your confusion is certainly justified. In my opinion, the difference between a web application and a website is another degree than definitions.

If a web page provides interaction without clicking links and filling out forms and provides a service for the user, I would say that this is a web application, not a web page. There is probably a concept of obtaining user data and manipulating it in one form or another.

In my own work, I develop web simulations for ancient computers. HTML / CSS provides a flexible level of presentation, while JavaScript provides basic simulations and user interaction implementations. I would say that these are web applications, not web pages, others may not agree.

Answer 3

This is a stupid and unnecessary difference.

The way I look at it, those who make a distinction between them, consider the website mainly as static content (possibly with a contact form or whatever). They believe that the web application is interactive.

I think this is just another stupid attempt to try to distinguish yourself from the rest, mostly useless terms such as "senior" and "architect".

I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years, and I call myself who I am, a web developer.