Web development with ESN Planet, how does it work?

Question

Hello,

I'm starting a new job soon, in web-app development. While I'm experienced with programming, my background is primarily in game development and desktop/server applications. I have very little experience from modern web app development. Anyway...

Our primary development tool is going to be something called ESN Planet, which I've not heard about before. Their website is not very specific about its features, and it seems unlikely for one to get a trial invitation ("We have been getting lots of applications, so please try to be as detailed as possible when applying for an invite below.").

Is anyone using this tool, and can explain what kinds of skills are involved in development of apps using this tool? Should I learn Python, JavaScript, CSS, or something else? All of the above? What is the workflow like for a developer? Will I need modern HTML skills?

I'd like to prepare for this job, but not sure what to expect and prepare for. My contact with the company is not a developer, so I figured I would ask here.

Answer 1

I saw a talk by the boss of the company that developed this stuff, at the Europython conference this year. It was ostensibly about the custom IDE that they created to develop in it, but also touched on the Planet system itself. It seems like a pretty run-of-the-mill MVC framework, as far as I can tell.

As far as what to learn, you will definitely need Python. Normally in web development you also need HTML, CSS and Javascript as well - but some frameworks abstract a lot of that away from you, to a greater or lesser extent. Impossible without knowing more about the framework to tell whether this is one that does. And it also depends on the way the company you're working for is set up - some have separate front-end teams that deal with that side of things, leaving the Python developers to just manage the server-side stuff.