Course abstract

This course assumes that the student knows how to develop a typical monolithic desktop single user application. We gradually morph such a desktop app into a web app that uses distributed components and serves multiple users at the same time. In this process, we see how familiar ideas like user interfaces, data storage, and front-end vs backend distinctions get reformulated in the new web aware distributed context. We discover how the assumption of multiple users via multiple access points adds new concerns such as identity management and security, and learn techniques for addressing them. At the end of this course you should be able to build a basic distributed web app and analyse constituent elements of the web and mobile applications that you use daily.