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Web Development ​

In the early days, software ran on mainframes, and users accessed the software through "dumb terminals." With the rise of personal computers (PCs), software began to run primarily on desktops, while applications like databases ran on servers. This approach is known as the Client/Server model, or CS architecture.

With the advent of the Internet, it became clear that the CS architecture was not well-suited for the Web. The main issue was that web applications require frequent updates and changes, but the CS architecture demands that each client upgrade the desktop app individually. This led to the emergence of the Browser/Server model, or BS architecture.

The Rise of BS Architecture ​

In the BS architecture, the client only needs a web browser, while the application's logic and data are stored on the server. The browser simply requests the server to fetch web pages and displays them to the user.

Web pages have strong interactivity because they are built with HTML, which offers powerful presentation capabilities. With server-side upgrades, the client requires no deployment and can immediately use the latest version, making the BS architecture rapidly popular.

Today, apart from heavy-duty software like Office and Photoshop, most software is provided in web form. For instance, services offered by websites like news, blogs, and social media are all web applications.

The Evolution of Web Development ​

Web development has gone through several stages:

  1. Static Web Pages: These are created using a text editor to directly generate static HTML pages. If you want to change the content of a web page, you have to edit the HTML source file again. Early internet web pages were mostly static.
  2. CGI (Common Gateway Interface): Static web pages could not interact with users. For example, a static web page cannot process a user's registration form submission. To handle dynamic data from users, CGI was introduced, allowing web development with C/C++.
  3. ASP/JSP/PHP: Given that web applications change frequently, using lower-level languages like C/C++ was not suitable for web development. Scripting languages became popular because of their higher development efficiency and close integration with HTML. Microsoft introduced ASP for web development using VBScript, JSP used Java for scripting, and PHP was an open-source scripting language.
  4. MVC (Model-View-Controller): To improve maintainability and avoid embedding script code directly in HTML, the MVC pattern was introduced in web applications. ASP evolved into ASP.Net, while JSP and PHP adopted various MVC frameworks.

Web development continues to evolve rapidly, with new asynchronous development techniques and MVVM front-end technologies constantly emerging.

Why Python for Web Development ​

Python's history predates the Web itself. Being an interpreted scripting language, Python offers high development efficiency, making it suitable for web development.

Python boasts hundreds of web development frameworks and many mature template technologies. Choosing Python for web application development offers not only high development efficiency but also fast execution speed.

In this chapter, we will discuss Python web development techniques in detail.