Motivation

As of July 2017, there were 4.57 billion active internet users worldwide. The Internet’s convenient usage has already become deeply internalized as part of natural human behavior.

If you aspire to become proficient in full-stack web development, however, the importance of transcending user-level interaction with the Web cannot be overstated. Just like how an auto mechanic must know more than merely the ways of driving a car — you, the developer, must look past the screen and truly understand the inner workings of the Web itself.

While there are already lots of valuable (and free) resources to learn about specific web technologies, this article does not strive to be a tutorial of any sorts. Rather, my intent is to help you establish fundamental knowledge of the Web without diving into the nitty-gritty.

The Internet vs. The World Wide Web (WWW)

First off, some terminology.

Is there a difference between the Internet and _the Web? _Yes.

Since most people nowadays access information on the Internetover the web browser exclusively, these terms have commonly — but erroneously — become synonymous.

The Internetrefers to the wide network of computer networks through which digital information can be exchanged over different protocols. The Internetis the most popular computer network in the world, but there are definitely other computer networks that exist.

The World Wide Web (WWW), or, the Web for short_, _is a way to access information via the internet. The Web is just a prominent example of an Internet application. Other examples of internet applications include email, online interactive gaming, chat apps. and BitTorrent.

Origins of the Web

The Web we know today was first conceptualized by Sir Tim Berners-Lee when he was working at CERN in 1989. He sought to improve how scientists shared information at CERN by laying out his vision in a document named Information Management: A Proposal. The document described concepts such as HTML, URI, and HTTP — all of which are technologies that remain extremely relevant in today’s Web infrastructure. By the end of 1990, Tim Berners-Lee had spun up the world’s first Web server.

#internet #computer-science #web-development #programming #full-stack-developer