Is there a high-level language for the web?

You need different languages for different purposes. In most web applications there's actually quite a bit going on, so you need the different languages and solutions.

If the goal is to unify on a single language, you can do that. You can use Javascript on the server, and then build the pages using `document.createElement()` and apply styles to them directly to the `styles` property. And on the server, store your data directly in files with Javascript.

Obviously this wouldn't work out that well. HTML is not perfect, but there is a reason it is so ubiquitous-- it does what it does simply and well. CSS is both convoluted and too simplistic, but the underlying idea of defining overrideable rules to express your design is sound. And SQL may be a pain to understand at times, but expressing database queries this way is expressive and actually works pretty well.

That being said, I'm not saying there is or should be one architecture. There shouldn't be. Each project should use an architecture in line with its requirements.

On your next project try to simplify: do you really need a database? Can you combine the view layers to simplify, either using something like GWT, Applets, Flash or .NET? Do you really need to serve up your content in a browser (which introduces CSS, HTML and Javascript complexities), or can you just write an application?

How are you supposed to teach web development to kids? Wow, that's a thorny one. How does one go about teaching them surgery, or intellectual property law, or civil engineering? Or for that matter auto mechanics, or plumbing, or general contracting?

Have you thought about popping in a Sesame Street tape?

Elmo doesn't like it when you trivialize his profession.

[Django](

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) can take you part of the way through its cleanness. It is focused around productivity. Teaching is not easier than any other language/framework, but look at it this way: when taught this tool, your students are well equipped in their knowledge of how easy it *should* be. They will never accept Java servelets or similar nightmares after having learnt Django.

I think your approach might need to be rethought. Take this for what it is, my opinion, but I would think this ordering might work better.

**Top Priorities:** (no particular order)

- Develop problem solving skills
- Be productive as a team

**Next:**

- Basic Programming skills (PHP, Python, etc)

After they know how to solve problems as individuals and as a team they can move onto specifics such as:

- Client/Server model
- Markup (HTML, XHTML, XML, etc)
- Styling (CSS)
- Client-side scripting (JavaScript / jQuery)
- Server-side scripting (PHP, Ruby, etc)

Build up their knowledge of what's involved piece by piece rather than jumping into the deep end off the bat - they'll be quickly overwhelmed.

At this point you can start to introduce things like file I/O and databases.

This will give them a fairly comprehensive skill-set. From here they can really start learning.

> In addition, one may have to deal with SQL for persistent storage, Memcache for sessions and caching, APIs of content management systems, OpenID, Facebook, Twitter, OpenSocial etc. to build anything interesting.

These are whole topics unto themselves, you can't bite them off all in one chunk. Especially if you're taking these people from 0. Before you can build something interesting you have to learn to build something mundane.

[HTML5](

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) will probably be more in the vein of what you're looking rather than Flash or Silverlight but it's not quite here yet...Though support is building.

Baby steps, Olav - if this were *The Matrix* you could download all that info in one shot but we're not there...yet ;-)

For the moment, and near future, web development is the synergy of many different technologies working together to deliver an interesting user experience.

Well, that's my 2 cents

"[Links][1] is a new programming language designed to make web programming easier. . . Links eases the impedance mismatch problem by providing a single language for all three tiers. The system generates code for each tier; for instance, translating some code into Javascript for the browser, some into a bytecode for the server, and some into SQL for the database."

At first I wasn't going to post this, since it's a research project, not a production system; but all these answers saying "that's how it is, deal with it" begged for a counterexample.

[1]:

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The multi disciplinary nature of web development is one of the things that makes it a joy to work in, *especially* in a team environment.

To work well as a team, you naturally come together with a group of people with a range of expertise, from UI/graphics people down to DBAs and sys admins. Even within a single layer of the group (for example back end programmers) each person generally specialises in a different set, for example some people may have more experience up towards UI, others down towards data.

I would take this variety any day, compared to working in a room of 10 java programmers all working on some middleware application.

If you simply want to teach them to write dynamic websites, set them going through the HTML tutorial on w3schools.com and once they're done, find yourself a decent looking stylesheet that they can include and set them going with PHP. That'll get them up and running as a hobby, and if they want to do more, they can start piecing together extra knowledge, like CSS and JavaScript.

Ruby on Rails goes quite a way towards unifying all of those, but for CSS it leaves you out in the cold (though there are probably a few frameworks for RoR that make CSS obsolete, but then you have another markup language, I think), and you still need Javascript (though it does write a lot of Javascript for you, and all DB code).

On the other hand, about your kids: programming is for programmers. On a Sunday afternoon to put something together in a few hours, you would need to know a framework, and buy some plugins, and get everything up and moving without much work. Something like Drupal or Joomla, where they sell templates (for Joomla you can buy packs of hundreds) and plugins to do all kinds of things. And when that fails, your kids should probably know how to go on ODesk and drop $100 to get something done on your framework. Learning to programming is good if you want to be a programmer. Otherwise, it's best to learn what you need to hire good programmers or buy good predone components, and have the cash to do it.

Last point about the kids: let them play video games. That is the best training that they can get for whatever the future holds in store on the computer side. Video games let you investigate, play, and relax with the computer. Once you have that, learning HTML, CSS, Javascript, and some application stack is cake.

Check out Opa:

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This is an up and coming web development technology. It looks quite promising. I have done a lot of web development over the past couple years and if I had to make a prediction which up and new framework/language/technology is going to be the primary way websites are developed in ~5-10 years I would say it will be Opa.

The documentation is great, the community is great, the tutorials and responsiveness to questions asked of the team working on the project is excellent. Overall they seem to have an attention to detail in regards to developing this new framework that seems to be unmatched.

[angularjs][1] could be an option. it is inteded for single-page-applications and runs on a nodejs-stack and does some template-javascript "magic".

example (template/code):
It binds(via auto-generated-client-side-js) the value from the input-field to the the heading(h1).
If you type something to the input field, the text in the heading gets updated.
And you don't have to write the frontend-js.

<input type="text" ng-model="yourName" placeholder="Enter a name here">
<h1>Hello {{yourName}}!</h1>


[1]:

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