Hi. I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this but here it goes anyway. :)
I'm thinking about writing a few programs to put on a web site. Things like a photo album, a few online databases for various things, a survey type application and some things like that. It's nothing very specific right now and it is just for my own use/learning/enjoyment. What I would like to know is what programming tools/languages/database are in popular use now. What would be worth my time learning.
I have been a programmer on various platforms and languages for 25 or more years now. But I have never worked with the web very much. I know dozens of languages and don't really favor one over the other. Different languages have different uses on different platforms and so far the language has mainly been decided by my employer at the time. And truthfully programming logic is programming logic its just a matter of what the syntax is for the language that you are using. But, If I am going to learn something new I would like to make it the popular and useful tools.
Any help and/or advice would be appreciated.
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php, there is also an interface available for it and mysql. Both free.
It is similar to perl so if you have had experience with perl....GoPhins! likes this. -
Also, can anyone recommend a good host for me to use to play with the suggestions that I get here.
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PHP + MySQL
Ruby on Rails + MySQL
C# (ASP.NET) + SQLExpress
VB.NET (ASP.NET) + SQLExpress
Those are mostly what I'd recommend and it all depends on your reasons for learning. If you'd like to find a job, the C# market is hot right now. If you just want it as a personal experience, then PHP is easier to host for free.
As far as hosting, first figure out which language you want to write in and what IDE you should use. For C# or VB.NET you've got the express editions of Visual Studio available for free. I believe there is PHP support within Eclipse, but I'm not sure since I haven't done any PHP in like 5+ years.
Good luck.GoPhins! likes this. -
Thanks, I'll do some research on the suggestions. I'm just interested for my own use not for employment.
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Definitely look into PHP and MySQL then as there's even tons of open source image galleries and other apps already written in PHP. You could start your own application and when you get stuck you could look at their source to see how they handled a certain problem.
You should be able to find plenty of PHP hosts out there for free, so it shouldn't be too bad.
Here's the PHP Documentation that includes configuration - http://www.php.net/manual/en/
For an IDE, I'd probably look into EclipsePHP - http://www.phpeclipse.de/tiki-view_articles.php
Or you could just code in your favorite text editor, since PHP is an interpreted scripting language and not compiled.
Here's the database MySQL - http://www.mysql.com/
I've also heard good things about PostGreSQL as another database - http://www.postgresql.org/
Anyway, the typical setup is LAMP - Linux Apache MySQL PHP (or could be PERL or Python)
Have fun and you shouldn't have that much trouble picking up PHP, it's pretty straight forward with some OO techniques available if you like to abstract out your design.GoPhins! likes this. -
Wow! Thanks for the advice and the links. I think that this is the way that I will go. :)