Web programming languages Options

[Rosetta]

This topic will be about Web programming languages, and your personal thoughts on them. (Serious opinions only. Stuff like "It sucks" or "It's good" won't be acceptable, give explanations.)

I'll start off by listing ones I have worked with.

Perl: Perl seems pretty neat to me, I can work with it quite well without getting lost in the code as it grows bigger. It is decently fast, and scaleable from what i've seen. I recommend it for medium to large web projects. Perl 6 is coming out soon, so we may see some even better things!

PHP: PHP is a stable, fast language that I find ease in working with. It is similar to Perl in many ways, but is also independant in others. I recommend it for small to large web projects, and for begginers and experts alike.

JSP: Just..ick. I've heard some good things about JSP (like it's fast, easy to learn and use, scaleable, etc)but I have not seen any of those 'facts' proven whatsoever when I tried to do JSP. When I make a script in JSP, after about 10 lines, i'm already lost. The syntax is just bloated and not human friendly at all. When i finished the JSP pages I did, and executed them on my server, it put unneccessary stress on it, and also loaded incredibly slow. (Ranged from 4 seconds to 10 seconds each page), it might have been good a few years ago, but personally, I would NOT recommend it for just about anything.

ASP: I spent 2 days learning basic ASP, and it was mediocre. It was similar to JSP, but was faster and a bit less bloated. The only problem I see with it is that it can only be run on Microsoft IIS server, which isn't bad, but is not known for being very stable compared to the most commonly used server software (apache). If you want to learn ASP, go right ahead. It's more of a "love it or hate it" language.

[Swiyth]

hmm.........are there any other software?

personally, i think PHP sounds the best for now. maybe we'll get more lessons on coding now @_@

[Rosetta]

The best software to use if you're going to do PHP is Apache.

The other languages I know of are:

Ruby
Ruby on Rails
ASP.NET(Different from normal ASP)
Python

[Swiyth]

i'll stick to those mentioned. but how do i even start?

[Rosetta]

I can teach you some basic PHP right now if you want. Do you have AIM?

[Swiyth]

heh. i was hoping you'd say that. yes i do. Swiyth.

[Dr Strum]

Perl really should only be used for big projects, but only if you can traverse that sick syntax without getting utterly confused. PHP is good, but there's something about the syntax I don't like (perhaps that it tries to look like C, but acts so differently?). Still use it though. Never used JSP or ASP, but I've seen code samples, and neither are pretty.

Because of the configurability of Apache, ANY programming language (not just scripting languages as listed above) can be used. Pick one of the gazillion different programming languages and go for it. (I'd choose Tcl if I could get mod_tcl or websh to fucking work right.)

Also, Ruby on Rails is just a certain way of implementing Ruby on the Apache server. Ruby on Rails, eRuby and mod_ruby (the other two Apache add-ons for Ruby) are basically the same thing. Just they work different, and they're managed (eg, how you embed the code within a page) differently.

[Rosetta]

I think Ruby is just a fad =/ And yeah, I know apache can be made to work for anything, but to the general newbie, it'd be better to use the originals.

[Dr Strum]

Explain how Ruby is a fad.

[Rosetta]

I know it's new and everything, and fast, but I see all these people who are like "OMG LEARN RUBY" for a few weeks, then after that, go back to PHP or whatever they were doing before because Ruby may be fast, but it can't handle certain things very well.. 90% of those people during those weeks time were under the "this is better than everything else no matter what" spell, so that's why i think it's a fad

[Dr Strum]

It's because they have no use for it. Ruby is an amazing language, but most the of the people who learn it, are not working on things big enough to require it.

[Swiyth]

heh. i'll just stick to PHP for now XD

[Elnendil]

[Swiyth]

hmm.........RPG maker?

[Rosetta]

I heard maitenence and troubleshooting in Ruby are a nightmare though. And it can be incredibly stressing on a server after some time.. (some places I know went from PHP to Ruby, and their site went down at least 4 times a week, when it didn't go down at all except on scheduled maitence days when it was on PHP)