Welcome to Pro Kotlin Web Apps from Scratch! In this book, you’ll learn how to build professional and production-grade web apps, completely from scratch, without the use of big and unwieldy frameworks.
My personal web app journey started with frameworks, but when I learned more about what goes on under the hood and grew weary of fighting framework bugs and limitations, I started teaching myself how to build web apps from scratch instead. As it turns out, frameworks aren’t a requirement!
You’re in good hands when you’re building from scratch, thanks to modern programming languages like Kotlin and amazing third-party open source libraries.
Back in the day, you needed thousands of lines of boilerplate and XML configuration to wire
up a framework-less web app. No wonder people preferred frameworks! Nowadays,
though, all you need is a couple of handfuls of explicit code, completely free of bloat and
magic, that only does what you tell it to.
In Part I, you’ll set up a web app skeleton, completely from scratch. This code base forms the basis for Part II, where you’ll learn a handful of patterns and practical solutions that build on the skeleton from Part I. Part III covers how to choose the right
library and Kotlin tips and tricks that I didn’t get to cover in the preceding parts. Finally, three appendixes explain how to replace some of the libraries chosen in Parts I and II, to demonstrate that you have free rein to choose different libraries than me and still write pro Kotlin web apps from scratch.
I’ve deliberately kept the chapter about Kotlin tips and tricks in Part III as short as
I’ve been able to manage. Instead, you’ll learn Kotlin tips and tricks in Parts I and II, and you’ll learn how to build web apps from scratch alongside explanations of the various
Kotlin language constructs you’re using.