How to create a Java Web Application? Do I need to first learn HTML, CSS, Javascript.....

Martin;

Welcome to Treehouse!

There are several Java based web frameworks available, one of the currently most popular is Spring MVC. Treehouse has just brought on another Java instructor and my understanding is that he will be taking on the role of Spring courses. There are a multitude of online tutorials for Spring as well. It is a great framework and is a great skill to have on your resume.

Happy coding,

Ken

Since it would be a web application all the client side work will be in html/css/javascript - There's no running away from it mainly html and css you need. HTML is the structure of the website/webapp and CSS decides how its displayed. Java is a server side language which communicates with databases an server side tasks. You can instead practice your skills in building a console application which demonstrates all the tools you have acquired here at treehouse or even a GUI based on java if you know how too, but if you still persist on creating the web application you will need to know html and css

Your question is a little difficult to answer because there are so many variables to take into account when designing an application. First and foremost, how much development/coding experience do you have? If you're just starting out, I would encourage you to start with a single language (Java?) and go from there. You'll find that many of the concepts that you learn for one language can be applied to others.

You mentioned creating something like Drop Box. Unfortunately Drop Box isn't as simple as you may think. Many engineers and a lot of capital have been allocated to create the product that you and I use everyday. Kudos to Drew Houston and team for doing such a great job :)

There are several technology stack and design questions that you're going to need to address. What's your design strategy? Are you shooting for a model/view/controller type of architecture with well defined boundaries? I'm currently working on a side project and we decided to use Spring Boot to implement our API and handle our business logic, PostgreSQL for our DB, and reactJS for the view or front end.

I would personally recommend studying the heck out of Java, then move on to learning Spring as someone had previously mentioned. It's a very popular and very well documented, supported, and used framework that covers multiple areas such as MVC, restful APIs, security, batching, etc. You may also want to dive into servlets and JSP a bit as well. From there you can explore JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that software development is an amazing field and there's nothing more satisfying than building a great software product or piece of software. However, there's a lot to learn and sometimes it can seem overwhelming. No matter what, don't get discouraged and don't ever give up. Come up with a plan to divide big tasks or large chunks of material into more manageable and learnable pieces. Practice everyday and remember that it's all about the journey and not the destination.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. -Henry Ford

Happy Coding!