Facebook® Application Development For Dummies®

Introduction

It's like a scene out of the movie West Side Story. You're on either one side or the other. On one side, you have the developers, who like to spend the wee hours of the night coding, Mountain Dew flowing through their veins. They like dark rooms. Vi (an editor for hard-core programmers) is either a curse word or the place that every piece of output that comes from their brains flows from. They don't sleep much and speak in Big O Notation (a mathematical notation for summarizing computer algorithms). They're either a Mac or a PC, an Android or an iPhone, and if they ever have to develop the other they do so unwillingly!

On the other side, you have the marketers, who think in terms of clicks and visitors and conversions. Dollar signs are above their heads, and they love it when people know about them and their products. Brand, market, user, demographic, and retention are common words off the tips of their tongues. Advertising, SEO, and affiliate programs are all tools in their arsenal.

For some reason, both sides have always had a difficult time talking with each other — neither wants to be on the other's turf. Programmers have a difficult time worrying about the business side and often don't do well in knowing how to increase visitors to a Web site or increase sales or anything that deals with working with people.

At the same time, marketers often don't care as much about knowing how the sites they're promoting actually work, or the technicalities or algorithms behind ...