pulseraiser wrote: PHP is

greg — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:38:30 +0000

pulseraiser wrote:

PHP is good but its only good for making small portals and shop carts.

Erm, that's not true, at all.

It's good for just about anything websites require.

pulseraiser wrote:

Grow up!

:puzzled:
The Ladybird Book of Hypertext Preprocessing

Something to consider,

jrhd437 — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:21:19 +0000

Something to consider, pulseraiser. As my original post says, I really don't have a very good knowledge of programming, so I'll have to look up what you're talking about. But thanks.

I have been playing with Ruby and really find it fun... and other than typos I haven't had any problems.

PHP is good but its only

pulseraiser — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:51:52 +0000

PHP is good but its only good for making small portals and shop carts. Grow up! Get into ASP.NET learning it is fun and challenging it lets you to write a codebehind file which is not scripts its a normal C# program that works in conjunction with the page's asp tagged elements.

OK then. Thank Abhishek

jrhd437 — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:54:02 +0000

OK then. Thank Abhishek Reddy (again!). I reckon I'll be going for Ruby then. I hear it can be harder because there are more than one way to do anything, but I guess I'll get used to it. I actual took about thirty minutes on the ruby site this morning and went through methods, arrays, strings etc. and I think it is (so far) pretty understandable. It's like reading English - not programmerish.

Thanks again!

jrhd437 wrote: Do these all

Abhishek Reddy — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:43:02 +0000

jrhd437 wrote:

Do these all accomplish the same end results, or do each of these languages have different strengths and/or applications?

The answer is yes. They are all general-purpose programming languages and could be used for the same purpose. At the same time, they do have different strengths, weaknesses and other characteristics. It would make for a long post to explain what they are. Probably the best way to learn the differences is to learn the languages themselves.

I put Python and Ruby at the front of the list because they are (in my opinion) easier to learn, more expressive, and just enjoyable to use. But they can also be scaled substantially to meet efficiency requirements.

jrhd437 wrote:

I really need make a decision soon - a decision that will no doubt effect my future in web design/development.

Any of the options I named would be fine as a first language. Hopefully you'll want to learn more than one in the future, so you're not likely to regret your choice.

Thank you all. Special

jrhd437 — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:00:39 +0000

Thank you all. Special thanks to Abhishek Reddy for making me look at things in a different light. Python, Ruby, Java or C# will be my new "to compare" list... Do these all accomplish the same end results, or do each of these languages have different strengths and/or applications?

I'm sorry for my complete ignorance on the issue. I'm trying to read up on it all as I really need make a decision soon - a decision that will no doubt effect my future in web design/development.

Thanks again everyone!

I'm one of those people that

kazimmerman — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:58:03 +0000

I'm one of those people that jumped into PHP without really learning the right way to work with it, just the easy and fast way. I never actually read through a tutorial or manual, just looked through different scripts and examples to learn, and I've come to understand that my programming skills in PHP are quite sloppy and bloated.

Now I have run quickly through C++ and am right now reading a manual on Java, and I am finding Java, which you pretty much have to use appropriately, is a great language to learn to advance to something like PHP. I've never dealt with Ruby, so I can't compare the two, but I will say that upon learning something like Java, picking up PHP will be mainly about the syntax moreso than the idea and structure of programming.

Sorry...but I lost interest

pr0gr4mm3r — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:53:01 +0000

Sorry...but I lost interest when the author considered writing HTML "programming", and stopped when he referenced only Java & .NET as "enterprise-level" languages. Plus, a quick skim revealed that he was comparing a framework to a language.

The following link is a LONG

greg — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:12:58 +0000

The following link is a LONG read but in your position I would take the time to read it...
http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/01/php_vs_ruby_on_rails_an_evol...

jrhd437 wrote: I love PHP

Abhishek Reddy — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:11:58 +0000

jrhd437 wrote:

I love PHP because it is so open and there are unlimited resources available...

I wouldn't recommend it as a first programming language (especially one you're learning while not subject to pressing business constraints). I've found that it is conducive to poor design habits and novices either eventually have to unlearn them with some effort, or indefinitely repeat them.

jrhd437 wrote:

... I have also seen that Ruby on Rails has a huge demand right now.

General perception of demand might not be the most reliable way to choose a language to learn programming with. That said, Ruby is the language, Rails is a framework, and Ruby could be a reasonable choice. There are other frameworks available too.

jrhd437 wrote:

I am not that interested in ASP because it is so proprietary; but you are welcome to persuade me.

ASP.NET is supported in Mono, and ASP.NET MVC was recently released under the Ms-PL licence without additional use restrictions. It does run under Mono, but may not be production-ready yet. There is a mix of free and non-free components in the ASP.NET ecosystem, so you might still like it.

(In this case, C# would be the language.)

jrhd437 wrote:

I am concerned on how easily the language can be picked up, but also on help available, as well as simplicity of the language and how the future of server-side is looking.

PHP meets those particular requirements, perhaps better than any other language. But I recommend approaching this with a different set of constraints. Look for a language or environment that reflects good, thoughtful, robust design, architecture and engineering practices -- rather than one that appears simple at first. It may mean paying a slightly higher initial cost in terms of learning difficulty, but that will pay itself off in the long term.

Consider Python, Ruby, Java or C#, then. Or if popularity isn't a big deal to you, a Lisp (e.g. Clojure), Scala or Haskell might be worth your time.

Good luck.