In the last month I was looking around to know what language should I learn, I come across PHP, Ruby, ASP(C#) and I really confused myself more and did not be able to make the right decision. I come here because I know you will help me as experts in your choice. Just an answer to my question may help me start.
1- As PHP expert, do you recommened me to learn PHP or to go with another language? In other words, if you have just started learning will you choose PHP again or choose another language?
php is one of the easier languages to learn, it’s also a C-style language, which means you will be using similar syntax as in C, C++ and Java, so it will be easier to learn these other languages later. PHP is much easier than C, C++, Java, which makes it a perfect entry level language.
Any web-programming also means you need to have a grounding in markup such as HTML and along with that CSS, and inevitably Javascript(JS).
So, it might be better to explain what programming/markup skills you have already, and then explain why you want to learn, what are your goals? Get a job? Create a product?
I want to learn a programming language that can serve me for different goals. For example for building personal websites, for freelance development services, and make it possible to grow more and build really big web applications.
Yeah I know it is easier to learn but I don’t care if it is easy or difficult, what I care about is that it is a good language and best for buliding small and large websites.
One of the first things they teach you in computer science course is a rule (forgot what its’ called): anything that can be done in one programming language can be done in another one. Which basically means that any programming language can do just about anything you need. Php is very convenient for web development as it has many functions specifically created for handling common tasks for web page creation.
One deciding factor may well be the amount of support you can count on, PHP and Sitepoint are a good combination in this respect - and given your reply that you already have a handle on CSS and HTML then yes, I’d say PHP is a good fit, but what do you expect to hear on a PHP forum.
Step 1 for many people remains buying (or borrowing) the right first book.
Ruby on rails is NOT faster than php. Ruby on Rails is not a programming language, it means ruby language with rails framework. It’s like saying “PHP on Zend” or “PHP on Symfony”
If you are still deciding which language to learn, why not throw Python in as one of the options? Python is cool too, all the cool kids use it. It’s big at Google, google guys just love Python.
Why not Java? Java is cool too, it’s probably the world’s most popular programming language.
Yeah I know that, but all of them are for web, what do you mean the right tool for the right job? As I know PHP can do what asp.net can and the opposite is ture, am I right?
There is no most powerful language for building websites.
Also, you should probably stop thinking what to learn and just start doing things.
Speed, size, ways of operating, portability and so on have no meaning for you if you don’t understand basic concepts of programming such as constants, variables, arrays, functions and how to use them.
Wanting to build a really big application is really silly “goal”, because you don’t build applications for them to be big. They usually have a meaning.
Also, knowing how one language works makes it easier to understand another one, as it was said already.
I’ll advocate for PHP, it’s extremely similar to C, which is still THE language.
So if you want to see generic tests to see whether Java, Python or whatever performs faster when looping trough 1 million iterations of a loop - google yourself out, there are plenty of biased and useless statistics about their performance.
However, in your case, I’d really recommend stopping with the same topics all over and over again and just finally sit down and do something so you actually get the whole picture about how things work. Then, when you know what you’re looking for and how things are ticking together - you can make your own decision whether you want to continue using php or swap to Java and so on.
Also good advice. Unlike Desktop programming web programming involves knowledge of front-end technologies in addition to any application programming languages being used
I would highly recommend learning programming fundamentals using either C or Java, than moving to PHP once you understand the things that are pretty consistent between all programming languages; conditionals, loops, variables, data structures, etc.
The problem with Ruby is order to do anything useful with it you need to have a full grasp of Ruby as a language on top of some framework such as; Rails. That would be like having to know PHP on-top of a framework like Symphony, which is just ridiculous just to start-off imo. I’m biased though, I won’t say I’m not, because I am, PHP is what I work with day to day so its natural what I promote. I have looked into everything else but PHP seems to be were I always end back at. Getting Ruby and Python running in a web environment is a just an all-around pain in the ass.
I remember only a few years back when people were so sure RoR would be replacing PHP… Yeah, look how that turned out.
I think you should take Blue’s advice. Don’t worry so much about “which programming language should I use” at this point. Pick one and sit down and learn to use it. The basic ideas behind them all are the same.
What do you recommened any way?
