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WebProgrammingLanguages.

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{NcsO}ReichstaG

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 13, 2004
Messages
1,768
Hey,
Yesterday I went to a bookstore to purchase a book on PHP5.0/MySQL. I have already been studying PHP a little. However, I realized maybe PHP 5.0 isn't the best language to study for web programming, since there is such a large variety of other languages. So my question is this: What do you think is the most powerful and "popular" language. By popular I mean, is or will be a mainstream language, not one that will wither away and die.
These are the languages I was looking @ to study:
PHP 5.0
Java Server Pages 2.0
ColdFusion
JavaScript(But I don't think this is a good language..am I wrong?)
ASP.NET - VisualBasic.net 0r C#.net?

Anything Else?
-Thanks
 
Go with PHP. It's open source, free, and common. The others, aren't for the most part.
 
PHP is about as mainstream as it gets. Doesn't get any better either IMO.
 
PHP, and when you hit its limits, you've got enough of a background to start looking into perl/mod_perl.

On the DB side, don't neglect learning about postgress once you learn a good deal about mysql, it will keep you from making some of the "mistakes" that mysql lets you get away with for ease of use.

Javascript is essential in todays web programming environment, some things have to be done client side and javascript is the way to do it.

As for coldfusion, stay away, "smart" people are moving to JSP, PHP, or ASP solutions in the markets it covers.
 
{NcsO}ReichstaG said:
Hey,
: What do you think is the most powerful and "popular" language. By popular I mean, is or will be a mainstream language, not one that will wither away and die.
These are the languages I was looking @ to study:
PHP 5.0
Java Server Pages 2.0
ColdFusion
JavaScript(But I don't think this is a good language..am I wrong?)
ASP.NET - VisualBasic.net 0r C#.net?

Anything Else?
-Thanks
Click to expand...

PHP isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It's extremely popular, very powerful and since it's cross platform, you can use it in many different kinds of environments.

ASP is slowly fading away, though not nearly as fast as some predicted it would. It's still pretty damn popular, and there will be people writing code in ASP or maintaining ASP code for many years to come. But as a language to learn for someone starting out, i'd recommend ASP.NET instead. That language is just starting to gain it's legs, and will definately open a lot of doors for you in the future.

Can't say much about Coldfusion or JSP, except they're not as popular as PHP, ASP or ASP.NET. But i do see a surprising number of employers asking for Coldfusion experience, so it may be worth your time to learn.

Javascript is a must have for any web developers skillset. It not server-side like the others, but it is essential for doing client-side programming. In a controlled environment, like a corporate Intranet, where everyone is on a specific browser standard, Javascript really shines, as it allows you to do some really nice client-side stuff like form validation, dynamic menus, etc. Also, the new buzzword amongst the web dev community is AJAX, which requires Javascript as part of it's implementation. Just trust me, you need to know Javascript.
 
Thank you for your input. However, what type of "things" does JavaScript, a client-side language allows one to do that can't be done with a server-side language like PHP?
 
one simple example would be checking to see if all necessary entries of a page of forms are filled out, and not letting the user submit until they are filled.

{NcsO}ReichstaG said:
Thank you for your input. However, what type of "things" does JavaScript, a client-side language allows one to do that can't be done with a server-side language like PHP?
Click to expand...
 
Whatsisname said:
one simple example would be checking to see if all necessary entries of a page of forms are filled out, and not letting the user submit until they are filled.
Click to expand...

yup, to expand on this example a bit. With a server-side scripting language like PHP, in order to validate form input, the user first has to submit the form, the server has to check it, if it's not valid, then the server has to resend the page to the user for proper input. This eats up server resources and bandwidth. With javascript, all the validation can all be done on the client's machine before anything is sent to the server, so there is no need to do round trips to the server every time the user enters bad data.

which also leads into why i initially said Javascript works best in a "controlled" environment. Out in the wild, wild internet, if you rely solely on Javascript for form validation, a user can simply disable javascript in their browser and thus be able to submit bad data to your server.
 
out of the choices you listed php is gonna be the most versatile easiest language to pick up. and as mentioned, there's not much you cant do with php but if you ever find yourself wanting more apache/mod_perl will give you nearly unlimited power while allowing you to keep a very similar programming style
 
What are the possible ways to web program using C++ or C++.net? Just CGI or are there are ways? Because I have been studying C++ and if it can be used to create dynamic web pages, I would like to try it out.
 
JSP is your best bet as far as backend framework. PHP is more for quick jobbie websites.
 
ASP.NET/C# will be the most powerful.

PHP lacks numerous features required to make it a contender such as strict typing, true OO, and more. Don't get me wrong: I like PHP and it has its places, but if you're going to learn any of those that you listed for serious money you'll want to learn ASP.NET/C#.
 
{NcsO}ReichstaG said:
What are the possible ways to web program using C++ or C++.net? Just CGI or are there are ways? Because I have been studying C++ and if it can be used to create dynamic web pages, I would like to try it out.
Click to expand...

I don't have much experience with c++ cgi, but I wrote a simple query string parser before that works pretty well in *my* testing :). I mostly did it for practice and do figure out how to decode hex. I never finished it though. It was basically made so I could get POST and GET data and read/write files in about the same way as PHP.

The problem was I had to write everything from scratch. I think I found a few libraries on the net that I could have used, but I thought it was still easier making my own functions than learning someone elses.

The reason I never finished it was I've never taken the time to figure out how to use winsock so my app could grab files or post files like you can with fsockopen in php.

If I needed to generate a page, I just used cout; making sure to cout a content-type header first.

I never tried to set up the app to achieve html + scripting like with php, but SSI could be used to do that I think.

So from my limited experience with c++ cgi, I'd say it has potential to do exactly what you want and only what you want in a great way, but unless you have an awesome library or can write exactly what you need in a flash, then it'd probably be unproductive. (at least compared to php).

If you want to see what I was messing with, it's here. That's how it was the last time I messed with it.
 
bofkentucky said:
On the DB side, don't neglect learning about postgress once you learn a good deal about mysql, it will keep you from making some of the "mistakes" that mysql lets you get away with for ease of use.
Click to expand...

I would just like to expand on this a bit. If you are going to start working with DBs, I would suggest starting with PostgreSQL then switch to MySQL later if you need/want to. MySQL is more popular, but lets you get away with far too many bad practices. For learning purposes, try starting with PostgreSQL, its free as well and a lot of the larger projects are now using adodb, and work with either DB system.
 
MySQL also lacks many features, but for some projects, those features aren't really needed, as you can see by how many projects use it and still work great.
 
PHP/MySQL isn't a great system. It is, however, fast, free, easy to set up, easy to learn & good enough for many applications. You could do a lot worse.
 
maw said:
Can't say much about Coldfusion or JSP, except they're not as popular as PHP, ASP or ASP.NET. But i do see a surprising number of employers asking for Coldfusion experience, so it may be worth your time to learn.
Click to expand...
I think this depends on where you look, which you touch on with the notion of employability. ColdFusion and J2EE are extremely popular for high-end business sites. I imagine ColdFusion is declining (though I don't have any statistics), and it's actually all based on J2EE anyway (your CFML gets compiled into Java classes). PHP is probably more widely deployed per-server, but per-traffic and certainly per-revenue (so to speak), J2EE probably has the upper hand. All just guesses, really; I haven't seen any real data in quite a while.


doh said:
ASP.NET/C# will be the most powerful.
Click to expand...
Is C# or .NET more powerful than Java in some way that I'm not familiar with? Are they actually more powerful than PHP, for that matter? They undoubtedly have more power to interact easily with Microsoft products. If you're looking for a web-programming environment that will also teach you the fundamentals of more general programming, though, I believe C#, .NET, and Java are pretty much equivalent. Maybe I know less about the Microsoft offerings than I like to think... :confused:
 
HorsePunchKid said:
Is C# or .NET more powerful than Java in some way that I'm not familiar with? Are they actually more powerful than PHP, for that matter? They undoubtedly have more power to interact easily with Microsoft products. If you're looking for a web-programming environment that will also teach you the fundamentals of more general programming, though, I believe C#, .NET, and Java are pretty much equivalent. Maybe I know less about the Microsoft offerings than I like to think... :confused:
Click to expand...

I haven't used Java for web applications, honestly. I favour C# simply because it is strictly typed, has a proper OO model, and can easily use other libraries. Java has these traits as well, I believe.
 
Fair enough. :) I agree... If you're looking to use web-based environments to get started on programming, at least pick an environment based on a more broadly-applicable language like Java or C#. PHP is nice for what it's designed for (hypertext preprocessing), but clumsy beyond that.
 
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