Seven Web Frameworks in Seven Weeks: Adventures in Better Web Apps (Pragmatic Programmers)

Tasting of Different Web Frameworks
This is a highly ambitious book attempting to cover 7 web frameworks over 5 different programming languages. The variety is quite good, with radically different frameworks in each chapter. It is definitely a mind expanding book for a web developer to read.Each chapter is broken down into 3 days. On day 1 you usually setup the framework and explore some basic features, and by day 3 you explore more advanced features. One cool thing about this book is that most chapters have a interview with the creator of the specific framework, or at least a major contributor.However, this book’s ambition to cover so much is also it’s downfall in a lot of ways. I never really got a clear picture of what to evaluate in a Framework. There is basically no introduction, and the conclusion is only 5 pages. I felt the authors relied on the interviews at the end of the chapter, rather than providing their own opinions.The language and syntax changes 6 times in this book! First you are looking at Ruby code, then Javascript (2 chapters), next Clojure, Erlang, Haskell, and Clojure again. For me this was too fast a change and too much to cover so briefly. Interestingly enough there is one quote in the book that it is better to have 100 functions operating on 1 data structure, than to have 10 functions operating on 10 data structures. I was thinking this book may have been better served to cover 7 Javascript frameworks, or 7 Ruby frameworks rather than switch languages each chapter.Some Day One’s just had too much to cover. For example, chapter 4 which is about the Framework Ring says this is what we cover on day 1:”We went on a whirlwind tour of a basic, but quite functional, Ring application. Starting from data design, we built models with Korma, a library that turns SQL into composable functions. Hiccup made creating views to present the data as easy as writing down data structures. Compojure helped by matching URLs to views trying everything together. Finally, we explored Ring middleware, which helped transform user input into easy-to-use structures.”So on Day 1, we are expected to learn Korma, Hiccup, Compojure, and Ring middleware? That’s in addition to assuming we are already familiar with Clojure.Overall, this is a pretty solid book though, and it will definitely give a web programmer new ideas. I’m still happy to have gone through this book and it’s worth checking out if you want to master web frameworks.

I really enjoyed exploring the various web frameworks covered in this book!
If you are interested in web programming, this book covers some commonly used frameworks and mixes in some lesser known but equally interesting frameworks.I especially enjoyed the coverage of Sinatra and AngularJS.I wrote several small Sinatra applications after reading this book and also used AngularJS in one of them!I also appreciated learning more about Ring (Clojure) and Webmachine (Erlang).I may not be using all of these frameworks in my current applications, they helped me see new or different ways to approach and solve problems.The book is easy to read and work through as well.I would highly recommend this book to those interested in expanding their knowledge of web frameworks.

I tried but failed to get the ruby code examples working in 2018 as a ruby newb. Tried installing the same version of Ruby used in the book (2.0), via brew install ruby @2.0. In doing that, rspec then fails to find that older ruby version. More options were suggested via stack overflow etc. as to how to hack this together, but I’ve decided to skip the ruby chapter for now as unworkable, just reading it instead. No live coding there as I’m not already a ruby master. This dependency destruction after five years is maybe a reflection on Ruby, though. Does ruby not have some kind of lockfile?! Onward to the Clojure chapters… hopefully easier to get going.

Great overview of 7 very different web frameworks, very much recommended. A couple of the examples depart a little from the languages’ best practices, but otherwise is a great way to find your next projects framework, or even just the language as it gives a feeling of how each language works with HTTP handling and how any framework would be built around it.Examples are also genuinely useful, real world websites that go beyond the too common TODO list.