Preserved Topic: Which Language to follow...

I am planning on taking a few classes this summer on a databasing language. I can't figure out what I should try to find. I was thinking about taking a Cold-Fusion class, but from the responces from this forum, it doesn't seem like that's the way to go. Where do you think I Should start off at?

( I am a newbie at databasing, but I am fluent in most internet based languages. )

mm. i'd say php... i've had a taste of perll.. i didn't like it too much...

but CF is like.. its hard to find a good provider for it..

{ kat ; mmm.. a site! }

PHP/MySQL (for UNIX platforms) ASP/MS SQL Server (for Windows platforms)

I gotcha, so PHP is the way to go then huh? I'm going to research some classes for PHP then. Thanks for the help!

- VHS -

I would also have to reccomend PHP, it is a nice neat, very dumbed down, easy to learn, yet very powerful.

I would also reccommend you not take a class on Cold Fusion, I have had the glory of working with it once, and would never ever want to have to do that again. I found it to be a most untollerable language with the ugliest and most useless tags going.

Perl was the first language that I learned, and I am sure it has come a long way in its time, but I am not sure if that is the easiest language to learn anymore. I think that would be PHP. Perl is a great language, but I think if you are a beginner PHP would make it loads easier on you, because it is both easy to set up, as well as having everything at your finger tips and not requiring you to load up different mods.

ASP, well that is another option, but I know that PHP works on win platforms as well. The other thing is that I find VB to be an ugly, and almost pointless language. The THEN statement alone makes me want to throw it out the window. If you want to have a go at it with Server Side JavaScript I would say go for it, but I haven't found much documentation on that end, on the web at least.

It is all a matter of taste, as well as what you can get paid to learn. Look into the pay arena and go from there.

Good luck, have fun,
-mage-

Although PHP can work very well on Windows platform, most web hosts prefer to use ASP on Windows platform. Simply said, it is a default server-side language for that platform...

blah! gah. today i got my first taste of asp, and it is one hell of a ghetto language...

i prefer 'echo' over 'response.write' ... blah. messy messy

{ kat ; mmm.. a site! }

Actually as much as I love PHP I'd really probably recomend taking a class on JSP (Java Server Pages). There is a big movement towards this as a server side scripting langauge because it is less processor intensive. It's also a bit more complex than PHP so learning it is a bit more difficult but transitioning back to PHP is fairly easy.

Hell a lot of PHP is just finding out all the functions already built in.

Really I'd stay away from the Windows based scripting languages (ASP and CF though I think both of these have *nix ports now) I think most major sites are using some version of Unix as their server.

Anyway though it sounds like a huge deal, learning how to interact wiht databases is really pretty easy. Open connection. run query (SQL) close connection with SQL being incredibly easy to learn.
anyhoo my $.02



Walking the Earth like Kane

[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 04-26-2001).]

I replied to this topic, but my reply was lost in transition, grrr. Anyway, I've said the following in response to kat's post:

Yeah, VBScript SUX! That's why I prefer using PERL and mod_perl...