What programming language would you recommend...

[GFED]

to a complete noob that hasn't done any programming since making BASIC text adventures on the C64 when I was like 7 years old... I'm interested in making web applications (simple utils, admin, frontend, cms) capable of communicating with MySQL. I've taken a look at PHP and JAVA which are greek to me... VisualBASIC and C++ seem to be a lot easier to understand but I'm not sure of the capabilities and limitations of each.


Thanks.

[tical]

php is exactly what you want to learn

it's not very difficult to begin using. buy / locate a book on php programming, actually READ through the first 4 or 5 chapters and DO the example / test projects and you'll likely learn enough to start fiddling around with some direction (and referencing the php book or the web for more specific issues)

[Chosen]

PHP

[EddyTheDog]

I would say stick with PHP as well.

Lots of resources available on the net - One tip, when you 'borrow' snippets of code you find on the net take the time to work out how they work. Don't just cut and paste them.

[BIGTYMER]

php. Super easy.

[CYF]

I'd recommend php as well

[DTK]

Your options are php and asp/asp.net. Php is mostly used on *nix operating systems, asp/asp.net is windows based. Asp pages are written in vbsript, asp.net pages are written in visual basic.net or c#.

jargon aside, php, vbsript, and visual basic are are all very powerful and easy to learn . I've made a good portion of my living doing windows-based coding for 15 years, but I'm not religious about this stuff. PHP is great too.

So for your needs, I think it comes down to which platform you feel most comfortable with. Either way, you'll be able to put together basic Web apps in no time.

[freecartoonporn]

php only

[GFED]

Thank you all for the fast replies... it looks like PHP wins the vote.

[d-null]

[Emil]

Thank you all for the fast replies... it looks like PHP wins the vote.

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

[Klen]

PHP plus linux bash and c.Bash and c are needed in cases when PHP something cant do.Using linux bash will limit your script to linux/unix enviroment only but almost nobody uses windows servers these days anyway.

[woj]

all the cool kids use ASM

[k0nr4d]

[woj]

pssh, I have the watercooled model

[BIGTYMER]

[adult-help]

php and mysql is all you need. if you cant learn this then programing is not for you..

[helterskelter808]

People say PHP because it's all they know. It's popular because it's 'easy', not necessarily because it's the best or most appropriate.

If you want to make web applications, you should use a framework. Popular ones for PHP are CakePHP and Codeigniter, but people seem to be going for Laravel now. Django and Rails are the most popular Python and Ruby frameworks, respectively.

I'd recommend you check out Django, Rails and Laravel and see which one you're most comfortable with.

[Barry-xlovecam]

If you understand and have a working knowledge of C++ and you will be doing you own code maintenance -- use C++ its the fastest language around today.

The problem with C++ is the availability of good programmers and existing scripts to work with.

[H]ipHop for PHP. With HipHop we've reduced the CPU usage on our Web servers on average by about fifty percent, depending on the page. Less CPU means fewer servers, which means less overhead. ...

...HipHop for PHP isn't technically a compiler itself. Rather it is a source code transformer. HipHop programmatically transforms your PHP source code into highly optimized C++ and then uses g++ to compile it. HipHop executes the source code in a semantically equivalent manner and sacrifices some rarely used features ? such as eval() ? in exchange for improved performance. HipHop includes a code transformer, a reimplementation of PHP's runtime system, and a rewrite of many common PHP Extensions to take advantage of these performance optimizations.
Scaling PHP as a Scripting Language

PHP's roots are those of a scripting language, like Perl, Python, and Ruby, all of which have major benefits in terms of programmer productivity and the ability to iterate quickly on products. This is compared to more traditional compiled languages like C++ and interpreted languages like Java. On the other hand, scripting languages are known to generally be less efficient when it comes to CPU and memory usage. Because of this, it's been challenging to scale Facebook to over 400 billion PHP-based page views every month. ...

https://developers.facebook.com/blog...hp--move-fast/

This is a platform worth watching, maybe learning -- it recognizes the issues and offers a possible solution.

[shake]

Python might be a good second choice as well, a little bit more complicated but more powerful as well.

[johnnyloadproductions]

Even with high level languages, this is what it ultimately ends up being.