Teaching web application development: Microsoft proprietary or open systems?

Abstract

This paper revisits the debate concerning which development environment should be used to teach server-side Web Application Development courses to undergraduate students. In 2002, following an industry-based survey of Web developers, a decision was made to adopt an open source platform consisting of PHP and MySQL rather than a Microsoft platform utilising Access and Active Server Pages. Since that date there have been a number of significant changes within the computing industry that suggest that perhaps it is appropriate to revisit the original decision. This paper investigates expert opinion by reviewing current literature regarding web development environments, it looks at the results of a survey of web development companies and it examines the current employment trends in the web development area. The paper concludes by examining the impact of making a decision to change the development environment used to teach Web Application Development to a third year computing degree class and describes the impact on course delivery that the change has brought about.