Ask HN: What would you consider a good web framework 'tutorial app'?

7 points·webmaven··6 comments

Assuming that you are a newbie to a framework (though perhaps not to the language it is written in), what are you looking for in the 'build your first app' tutorial commonly included in the docs?

Good examples of 'tutorial apps' would be welcome as well, including why you liked them.

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Twitter clone. It is straightforward enough to not take a lot of time, while touching many different "real world" areas (e.g. database, WebAPI, UI, etc).

Looks like the following projects have done this:

* Railstutorial - http://draft.railstutorial.org/book/toy_app

* Flask tutorial - http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.10/tutorial/

I don't think one size fits all here. To me, a good tutorial app is one that effectively showcases the strengths of a framework while being honest about weaknesses.

So for Django/Rails, anything that goes over CRUD operations would be good. For Flask/Sinatra, an API endpoint. For Meteor, a small, realtime chat application. You get the idea.

And keep it simple. Don't try to cram everything into a tutorial — especially if there is a lot of complicated setup required. Just give me the lay of the land and at the end of the tutorial a link to the reference docs so I can keep going if I want.

Anything that has the following at basic level:

Primarily * Login scheme * i18n translation * Ability to display content from databases

Secondarily * API consumption (e.g. twitter, instagram, etc.) * Caching * Dynamic content support (JS and JS frameworks)

Write a Hacker News clone. It can be done within a few days. It includes all elements for a web app: basic MVC, storing stuff in a DB, handling authentication...

User management and secure login, with some very basic CRUD operations would be nice. Usually the starting point where people get stuck.

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