Full Stack Day

I have always been a "full stack" kind of guy. When I started teaching myself to program back in 2003, I had an app in mind that required a some knowledge of css, databases, and everything in between. At the time I didn't even really know what those were but eventually I figured it out. I'm doing Full Stack Day to help others get started with all the technologies you need to build websites.

If you think about it, there are just way too many technologies you need to know about to build a decent data-driven website.

• Database - you need to store that data somewhere. Sometimes just putting it on the file system works but using databases really can make things a lot easier.
• Server-side web framework - Something needs to talk to the database and generate that Html. I've used ASP.NET (webforms and MVC), Ruby on Rails and Node.js. They each have their strengths and weaknesses.
• Html - There is, of course, the Html itself for your web pages. This is the easiest part.
• Javascript - Depending on what you are doing on the web, strong knowledge of Javascript may not be required. But these days it is a lot more common to use it than before, so you should really understand it. There are things you just can't do without it.
• Css - Want to make your web pages look nice? Css is the technology to do that. Knowing Css doesn't make you a designer but you need it to effectively create a design on the web.

That is a lot. Though I had some experience with Html by 2003, I didn't really have much with the others so I jumped in and learned them. It was a bit painful at first. Trying to learn all of them at the same time was daunting but I worked through it.

Full Stack Day is something I am putting on with the North Dallas .NET User Group to help people get started in this group of technologies. It is meant for those who know some but not all, though someone generally unfamiliar with web stuff can still benefit. We're selling the tickets for pretty cheap ($15) and the funds will go to the North Dallas .NET User Group. It's an all day event on Dec 3 and is about half instructional time and half hands-on lab.

So if this is something that would benefit you, sign up. There are only 35 tickets left so sign up soon. If you have an questions, put a comment in below or contact me otherwise.

Update:

If you are coming, make sure you have Visual Studio 2010 installed, MVC 3 (both of which you can get by installing what is shown on http://www.asp.net/mvc - hit the "Install Visual Web Developer Express" button) and sql server 2008 express. You should also get the 2008 management studio express software installed. You can also get all these things (I believe) using the web platform installer.