what's your prefered server side scripting language to learn?

baby asp-er · March 7th, 2002, 07:27 PM

Newbie here...

Hi people, I am a web designer... and am finding the need to learn programming ever increasing but am not sure what is the easiest...best way to go

Any suggestions? I would prefer to stick to server side as it seems like the way of the future but I'm open to all ideas.

Thanks!

vass0922 · March 7th, 2002, 10:25 PM

Well personally I dont know any perl or python, but would like to earn eventually... mostly all I know regarding scripting is vbscript. Easy to use.. can trash a system pretty good.. loaded with vulnerabilities, worthless outside of the MS environment...what more could you ask for?

dragonb · March 8th, 2002, 12:46 AM

there's pretty much the 3 big server side languages that I know of.
ASP, PHP, and CGI(perl, etc?)
I've done both asp and php. They are fairly similar, but different syntax. I would choose between those, depending on what platform. For exclusive windows, ASP, and for a linux/unix that will also run under windows, PHP.
But, then all the purists might come along and scream perl/cgi. I looked at some of that code, and it wasn't as easy to understand right off, I thought. But, I'm sure it's not that hard.

Also, along with asp and php, you pick up a lot of client side vbscript and javascript along the way. Sometimes it's hard to even see where one leaves off and the other begins.
good luck, and feel free to ask questions.

dragonb

qball · March 8th, 2002, 12:50 AM

Quote:

I am a web designer...

right!

dragonb · March 8th, 2002, 12:57 AM

LOL, Glad to see you here Qball.

I've kind of missed your sense of humor, even though many people don't seem to understand it.
dragonb

baby asp-er · March 11th, 2002, 01:25 PM

LOL, thanks everyone...

and by web designer... I mean I make em look pretty! haha... or at least I try, but functionality is really more important to me just a lot harder to learn... I'm gonna go with asp I think... and maybe asp.net... any oppinions on that? heard it is way better but not everyone plans to support it...

qball · March 11th, 2002, 09:55 PM

fair enough.

Anyway, do you want to learn programming or 'dynamically generating HTML thru server-side scripting'? versus 'dynamically generating HTML thru server-side processing'?

My point being, simple scripting is one thing, to do anything useful, you'll need some concept of programming.

baby asp-er · March 12th, 2002, 05:20 PM

Point well taken, Thanks... guess the easy way isn't always the best way. So... then perhaps my focus should be VB first?

maybe that will help me lose this swimming feeling too!

man, how do you guys do it? my mind's slowly turning to mush!

vass0922 · March 12th, 2002, 07:28 PM

take it one step at a time, don't try to learn vb/asp/.net stuff java etc etc etc...

asp.net is not free FYI ...
You'll have to get something to compile it.. not sure but I would assume vb.net would be able to compile it

then you will of course require IIS to run the stuff...

asp.net is a big bite to chew for just starting off.. vbscript would be fairly easy to learn initially.. I've also heard python is a really easy language to learn initially....

dragonb · March 12th, 2002, 07:38 PM

I would think that basic ASP would be an ok place to start. There's quite a few good sites and tutorials out there that would be a good start.

But, what are you planning on doing? Or what would you like to learn to do? The best thing these server-side scripting can do is database access, along with the interaction with the user and the database, generally through forms. They obviously can do a lot more.
Anyway, what would you like to do? And I'm sure with some ideas we could point you better in the right direction.
Maybe you want to even go the way of learning flash.

dragonb