[barefootcoder]

Somehow I feel like this comment is meant to be directed toward me (OP), but am struggling to see how it applies to what I was asking. In fact, I specifically asked for resources to assist me in orienting my mind to the web development way of doing things.

Perhaps I've misunderstood and you're actually directing the comment at the hodge-podge of web frameworks that don't seem to follow the principles of design that other languages do?

[elg0nz]

The main point I was trying to get across is that most software is indeed Hacky, not because Computer Science is terrible, but because the people who made it don't have a solid understanding of many fundamentals. They've taught themselves to "program in 21 days" and later have a hard time understanding why things break.

Peter Norvig said it better than I can, becoming a great programmer takes 10+ years. http://norvig.com/21-days.html

Data structures, design patterns, software & hardware architecture and, distributed computing are subjects that all engineers should be familiar with.

For example, the question whether to use NoSQL or SQL is another way of asking if you need to use a Hash or a Binary Tree.

Bad engineers pick one or the other based on Marketing or White Papers, Great Engineers pick the right one based on understanding how their algorithms will use that data and why there are no silver bullets.