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Useful things to know before using the system

Lukas Gustavsson edited this page Apr 5, 2022 · 6 revisions

The website is programmed with a number of different languages with different functionalities. Depending on what you want to do you will have to learn some of the languages. The main distinction between the languages is if they run on the server or the client. If you want to do design and user interaction you will want to learn the client-side languages and if you prefer doing backend functionality you want to learn the server-side languages. Mostly when working on the website you will do both frontend and backend since most projects involve the client and server working together.

Server-side

When programming the server-side you will mostly use Ruby with the Rails ecosystem. It is therefore recommended to learn a bit of Ruby before attempting backend project. You will also have to get used to the Rails ecosystem.

Recommended learning resources and code reference

Client-side

The client-side is mainly about user interaction. The languages you will use client-side are HTML, CSS and Javascript. HTML is usually not called a programming language but rather a markup language. It is used when structuring the visible content on the website. To style the content we use CSS and to add interactivity like drop-down menus we use Javascript.

Every language uses frameworks to ease the development process. Our HTML-files are prefixed with .erb to allow usage of Ruby code in the files. With CSS we use SCSS to allow variables and imports. Javascript uses jQuery to simplify programming user interaction.

Recommended learning resources and code reference