The most headache-less path to Web Development?



  • Can someone advise me on the best stuff out there concerning web development?

    Which tools to use?

    Which platform to use?

    Which books to read?

    Which technologies to learn?

    I would google, but there are so many different opinions out there.



  • (your post is nearly a flamebait, because the different opinions also exist in this audience...)


    Before you start doing web development, learn HTML and JavaScript. Without that, you will never know what you really do.

    Then, you might want to take a look at Ruby on Rails, ASP.net and/or JSP.
     

     



  • I'd begin with a classic quote from Douglas Adams :

    "I think a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about the telephones. The computer nerd is somebody who uses the computer in order to use a computer."

    Problem : the web is absolutely crawling with web nerds, and as we know, too much information kills the information. When seeking for references on google, first results are quite often crap. Be very, very careful especially on code design of the examples you see ( especially html/css/javascript ), bad habits and poor advices are all over the place. Prefer good bookmarks over googling all the time. Like movies and books, a bad audience on a particular language easily makes an undeserved bad reputation, brings a WTFed culture to a whole environment.
     
    For example, while I'd say PHP is Ok ( it kills me to say that, but you know, most virulent anti-smokers are smokers that just quit ), the documentation found on php.net is full of WTF comments. Another example is that VB is cursed due to the fact many developers who use it are beginners.

    That said, the best thing would be to share worthy bookmarks. Here's what comes to my mind :

    CSS Layout techniques

    Quirksmode

     By the way that's already advanced topic. Basic references are everywhere but be careful.<font size="-1"> w3schools.com comes handy when googling html tags but it's not quite the best available source.</font>

    <font size="-1">A better start would be HTMLDog which is referred by Mozilla Developer Center</font>

    And about the particular programming language you choose : don't try learning the programming language and html/css/dom at the same time.



  • @ammoQ said:

    (your post is nearly a flamebait, because the different opinions also exist in this audience...)


    Before you start doing web development, learn HTML and JavaScript. Without that, you will never know what you really do.

    Then, you might want to take a look at Ruby on Rails, ASP.net and/or JSP.

    ammoQ is spot on. 

    Along with HTML, learn how to use CSS properly -- it's an absolute must in this day and age.

    There are a lot of programming languages out there.  PHP is popular but easy to learn bad habits with.  You may also want to consider Python (possibly alongside the Django framework, which is to Python as Rails is to Ruby).  Perl is widespread and good to know, but not really an easy language for a beginner to pick up.  The best language for you to learn first is also going to depend in part on whether you plan to work in a Windows or a UNIX hosting environment.

    Finally, learn SQL (the language, not SQL Server) and the basic principles of database design and use.  MySQL is free and good for beginners because it's simple and fairly forgiving, but also has some WTFs of its own and some bad-habit traps.  PostgreSQL is also free, and can help you learn more advanced database use.



  • And I guess I should probably avoid "What You See Is What You Get" tools? No?

    In the past they have not been nice to me.



  • Actually, WYSIWYG tools are probably the most headache-free you'll get. Of course, it'll cause headaches for *other* people, but do you care?

    Seriously, do you? If you just wanna whip up a web page for your gramma, pick up a copy of Dreamweaver (best for WYSIWYG static web pages, but costs an arm and a leg) or Visual Web Developer Express (pretty good for WYSIWYG and basic ASP.NET server-side stuff, but also free, free, free).

    If you want to be a serious web developer, do as ammoq suggests. Here's a more expanded list of steps:

    1. Learn static HTML (preferrably XHTML 1.1) and how it works as a markup language to add display characteristics to text
    2. Learn Cascading Style Sheets and how CSS works to modify the display characteristics of HTML.
    3. Learn Javascript and the Document Object Model and how you can use Javascript to manipulate the display on the fly.

    When you're finished learning the *display* medium, you can focus on how to dynamically generate HTML on the server rather than on the browser:

    1. Learn the Hypter-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), how it's stateless, and how you can get around this drawback via GET, POST, and COOKIES
    2. Learn a server-side technology like PHP, CGI/Perl, ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, or JSP. I cannot recommend one over the other as I hate four of them equally and have never used the fifth.


  • I'd echo the "learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript" message you're seeing over and over again.  At the end of the day, that's what your finished product is going to be for the forseeable future, hype allowing.

    As others are saying, WYSIWIG is just fine for gramma's travel photos website, but I'll go just a step further an explain why.  If you're doing any serious development, you'll reach a point with a WYSIWIG tool where something just won't work right or flat out breaks.  Sometimes it just won't be able to do what you want it to do.  In order to fix it, you need to understand what's going on underneath the hood ahead of time, or spend days/weeks in Hell trying to figure it out as dealines whiz by.

    Another black mark against those tools is that they have at least historically generated awful html that's impossible to work with outside the ide(see above).  That's why a lot of people who have been developing web stuff for a while will cringe when you mention using a WYSIWIG.  To their credit, the tools are getting better, and bandwidth isn't as much of a problem as it used to be.



  • I had often that I fancied something in Visual Studio, and then a co-worker opens it in Adobe GoLive!

    Screwed up the entire HTML coding.



  • This all depends on what servers you have to play with. If you wanna develop for the most common types of servers you'll be dealing with a *AMPP stack: Linux/Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl (CGI).

    As far as tools... its really pick your poison. I personally use Eclipse for my dev environment (with Zend's php plugin installed), SQLyog for database work, DBDesigner again for DB work, Programmers Notepad for quick editing, FileZilla for FTP, and Firefox with a shit ton of add ons for my browser (along with standalone versions of IE  7, IE 6, and IE 5.5 installed). It's whatever you feel comfortable with. 

    As far as books, anything from O'Reilly is good..

    Technologies... Frankly as far as coding practices go, learning the ins and outs of a MVC framework is INVALUABLE regardless of what language you end up developing in (Ruby on Rails, ASP .NET, PHP, etc.). Other than that know XML, throw in some JSON to round yourself out, get introduced with SOAP, know HTTP Headers, HTTPS, etc.
     



  • Use WYSIWYG to begin with, but look at the code of every page afterwards; some WYSIWYG editors make lots of minor-WTFS, and relying on them too much will make you lazy!  



  • @Emyr said:

    Use WYSIWYG to begin with, but look at the code of every page afterwards; some WYSIWYG editors make lots of minor-WTFS, and relying on them too much will make you lazy!  

    Side note:
    This is how I started with Frontpage, long ago, but the problem is that I did not understand the code, so in the end I learned nothing.

    I truly learned HTML basics from HTMLgoodies.com where a guy with a beard gives you a step-by-step from scratch. THAT was helpful.

    After that, I never used a Wizzywig editor again, coded in Notepad, and then as I got better and my work more involved, I moved to better text-editing software. I tried several, such as Ultraedit, Jedit (aaargh! Bastardly slow Java editor!), and Vim. I now heart Editplus, mostly because of its FTP abilities and easy customisability (I'm a customizer). If I ever were to get a Mac, then Textmate is my dearest friend.
     



  • Right on dhromed - here's to notepad, a surprisingly good html editor for beginners.



  • @Oscar L said:

    Right on dhromed - here's to notepad, a surprisingly good html editor for beginners.

    How can you guys code in Notepad without getting eye cancer? I only use it for... notes.
    There's only one standard editor I use every now and then for coding: gedit. It's not bad for something small

    edit:

    Oh yes. As other suggested I'd start out with HTML/CSS/Javascript. After that I think Python(+Django) or Ruby(on Rails) would be good starter languages. 



  • How can you guys code in Notepad without getting eye cancer?

    Notepad is way too newfangled for the truly l33t. I mean, it's got copy/paste and search/replace! Screw that.

    The truly l33t write all their stuff in edlin.



  • @Oscar L said:

    Right on dhromed - here's to notepad, a surprisingly good html editor for beginners.

    To be contrarian, you'd be much happier with something that at least provided color-coding... like EditPlus or UltraEdit.

     



  • @Ice^^Heat said:

    Can someone advise me on the best stuff out there concerning web development?

    Which tools to use?

    Which platform to use?

    Which books to read?

    Which technologies to learn?

    I would google, but there are so many different opinions out there.

    There is no headache-less path to Web Development. There will always be headaches...Sorry, but that comes with the job!

    But to help you out here is my advice. 

    Eclipse is very good from my experience, it is simply the best IDE out there. (In my opinion)

    Development on Firefox is pretty nice, especially with the add-ons out there.

     
    Go to Amazon.com and search: Code Complete 2 Edition. Its a really good book (O'Reilly is pretty good at Programming Language Books)

     
    I use Coldfusion, Java, Flex 2 for web development and they satisfy me, nothing is really too hard or too easy 

    Of course, HTML, CSS, SQL, and XML are pretty important too.
     



  • @whereiseljefe said:

    As far as tools... its really pick your poison. I personally use Eclipse for my dev environment (with Zend's php plugin installed), SQLyog for database work, DBDesigner again for DB work, Programmers Notepad for quick editing, FileZilla for FTP, and Firefox with a shit ton of add ons for my browser (along with standalone versions of IE  7, IE 6, and IE 5.5 installed). It's whatever you feel comfortable with.

    It sounds like many of you are using Windows as your development environment.

    I'd advise against that, unless you are targeting IIS hosting. If you are targeting Apache on a non-Windows platform, try to your development in an environment similar to the server, if at all possible.

    1) Install Linux, FreeBSD, something... on a machine you use for development, preferably your primary machine.
    or 2) Install it inside of VMWare
    or 3) Install PuTTY and/or XMing on your primary and remote into a suitably set up development box (your own, or at a hosting co)
    or even 4) get a mac.

    Do make sure you have shell access to your web host. Anything less can be very frustrating when you need to debug things or do low-level site management. Competently run hosting providers can provide you with it or at least offer it at... the dodgy ones reselling a shared server with a default install of PHPMyAdmin for bottom-barrel prices won't.
     



  • also if you'r going to use linux to develop it on, then the following website/package installation is going to be a life saver, because sad as it is, IE is still a fact of life.

    http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page 

    ies4linux, simply installs wine and IE 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 and recently also has a beta version that runs the 7.0 engine inside the 6.0 skin. 



  • @webzter said:

    @Oscar L said:

    Right on dhromed - here's to notepad, a surprisingly good html editor for beginners.

    To be contrarian, you'd be much happier with something that at least provided color-coding... like EditPlus or UltraEdit.

     Yes, or even... I don't know... indenting?

    My spacebar suffers when coding in Notepad...



  • @RiX0R said:

    @webzter said:

    @Oscar L said:

    Right on dhromed - here's to notepad, a surprisingly good html editor for beginners.

    To be contrarian, you'd be much happier with something that at least provided color-coding... like EditPlus or UltraEdit.

     Yes, or even... I don't know... indenting?

    My spacebar suffers when coding in Notepad...

     

    Well to be fair, because there's only 1 undo level, it teaches you pretty fast to not make mistakes :P  



  • Lets just assume I got some basic C# experience.

    I built a WTFy web application about 2 years ago in ASP.NET. (1 page, Default.aspx that has all the "pages" in the form of panels. *sigh*)

    I built an little less WTFy web application in PHP last year. Still WTFy tough, when I look back at it.

    Working right now on a Web Application with Visual DataFlex/WebApp.

    Still wondering if Web Application Development is a right choice. Everybody is doing it, what is so damn special about the Web????

    I am more interested in the programming stuff, Database stuff and "architecting". I don't care much for presentation. Fixing up XHTML compliance is rather tedious than challenging. Is this not something for the Multimedia people?

    Maybe I just whine to much, maybe I should watch "Office Space" again.

    Anyways, which platform should I target? IIS or Apache? And is it possible to avoid PHP? Since a lot of Web Hosts seem to have only that.



  • Everybody is doing it, what is so damn special about the Web????
     

    Nothing.

    It's easy to step in, is all.

    If you want special, write programs for scientific or game purposes. Statistical data munchers, graphics engines, visual filter algorithms.

    Programming is about automation. You let the computer do stuff that you don't or can't. It's not a religious career. My little project-folder-creation batch file is founded on the same principles, and exists for the same reasons as a recursive treemapping enzyme-folding algorithm.

    Fixing up XHTML compliance is rather tedious than challenging. Is this not something for the Multimedia people?

    Grey area.

    In the literal sense, too. Markup is the intermediate code that sites between visual style+layout and program code.

    You, as a web programmer, must know how to generate proper XHTML. Don't be lazy. Markup is not the "lesser" part of websites. As code, it can be pretty in that programmer's aesthetic sense.

    The Frontent style & interface designer must know how to mock up in proper XHTML and CSS.



  • Do yourself a favor and target Apache, since it runs on everything (including Windows).

    If host _only_ offers PHP, then you don't need that host. 



  • Why are there so many languages???? C#, Java, Python, PHP, Perl....

     Why can't we have just one ü<FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>berlanguage???</FONT>

    <FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Hole in the market! I think I am going to develop an ü<FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>berlanguage! And I will write the compiler in VB.Net ;)</FONT></FONT>



  • @Ice^^Heat said:

    Why can't we have just one ü<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">berlanguage???</font>

    The people who create languages just aren't all that bright.

    This may be because smart people would not embark on a task so difficult and profitless as creating a language.



  • @asuffield said:

    The people who create languages just aren't all that bright.

    This may be because smart people would not embark on a task so difficult and profitless as creating a language.

    Is this meant to be sarcasm? If so, it's a little too subtle for me :/



  • @Ice^^Heat said:

    Why are there so many languages???? C#, Java, Python, PHP, Perl....

     Why can't we have just one ü<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">berlanguage???</font>

    That's exactly how a windev was born. To put it short, just imagine sort of VB in french ... guess what, they're so ashamed you can't find a single line of code on their website.

     If you feel prepared, just search for "wlangage". Indeed, they have also a web-oriented environment, which is cleverly named ... webdev.

    No silver bullet ? Eh, guess what, people still make a living of that. Call it snake oil consultancy.
     

     



  • Yeah, why do all languages have to be English anyway? :P



  • I'm fairly certain English wasn't a conscious choice, BUT, it remains as it is partially because English is one of the few languages thas has no accents or special characters at all, and you can just type it with the limited amount of keys on your standard keyboard.

    The issue is a bit more complex than that and cause/effect is easy to confuse, but simplicity of language syntax seems a real influence in keeping the English status-quo.

    Still, I wonder what a program in Katakana or Mandarin would look like. It's not just different  characters; the entire grammar of a program would be different, which might even stimulate new programming concepts.



  • That was confusing and you have a point. But I mean, it's a french-speaking programming language like cobol was aimed to look like english. The API is a bit like PHP, that is : triying to be exhaustive in a single "flat" namespace, which results in tons of verbose function names. OO is available in this language but as far as I know ( most of ) the api isn't, for legacy reasons I guess.

    But really my point is : here is an example of "universal language wanabe". Commercially, they aimed the right market, big companies, being executive-friendly and presenting themselves as interfaceable with DB2, IBM iSeries ( formerly known as AS400 ). I'm sure quite many front-page articles are waiting around ;-)

    A programming language not being natively english is not a WTF in itself but having to think in several languages while programming would be painful. But english being a monopolistic language is itself not fair .. well, that's a big issue. Still, I prefer to "think" in only one language, that is, english, while programming. Would be too confusing otherwise.

     And about programming language trying to look like native language, that's another issue. Readability being one of the most important things today, that's relevant. But some programming languages just do it backwards and too verbosely : they look like native language, but they're ridiculously unreadable.



  • I just hate "more human readable" languages. Like Visual Dataflex and VB.

    I don't like writing:

    Get horsepower of oCar to iHp

    No no no, I hate it, its so unclear.

    hp = car.getHorsepower();

     That is just way more clear to me. And it requires only one eye-blink.

     



  • To add to that,

    When I am programming, I am in an English mindset. But .NET for instance, has native language versions. Which means you get debug errors in your native language. When I get dutch error messages, I get so damn confused.

    Variable, null, Out Of Range, translated!!! Arghh!!

    I just looked up the description of an PHP function in the manual, I got a damn dutch description. Could not make heads or tails of it. However, the English description was way more clear.



  • @Ice^^Heat said:

    To add to that,

    When I am programming, I am in an English mindset. But .NET for instance, has native language versions. Which means you get debug errors in your native language. When I get dutch error messages, I get so damn confused.

    Variable, null, Out Of Range, translated!!! Arghh!!

    I just looked up the description of an PHP function in the manual, I got a damn dutch description. Could not make heads or tails of it. However, the English description was way more clear.

    Well, you can set languages, of course. At least on PHP.net.



  • If you want something really very quick then give a try to a blogging. Create an online blog for you and start blogging. You would create a great website in small time very soon.

     With regards,

    Mandar Thosar
     



  • So in what kind of enviroment are "Enterprisey" web application developed?

    Like Amazon.com or those Real-Time Order Tracking systems built by Shipping companies?

    I bet not PHP :P



  • @Ice^^Heat said:

    So in what kind of enviroment are "Enterprisey" web application developed?

    Like Amazon.com or those Real-Time Order Tracking systems built by Shipping companies?

    I bet not PHP :P

    Amazon.com is a real example of how NOT to do a web site (technically - business-wise, I wouldn't turn their situation down).

    Seriously - go load up amazon.com,  find a product and then view source. What a freakin' bloated, hideous, untidy, wasteful, confused WTF-full mess!



  • @RayS said:

    Amazon.com is a real example of how NOT to do a web site (technically - business-wise, I wouldn't turn their situation down).

    Seriously - go load up amazon.com,  find a product and then view source. What a freakin' bloated, hideous, untidy, wasteful, confused WTF-full mess!

    You mean we're not suppose to embed javascript and CSS inside HTML at seemingly random places?  Seriously though, I think FrontPage makes better HTML than that garbage.  I'm absolutely surprised it actually renders correctly.

     



  • @lpope187 said:

    @RayS said:

    Amazon.com is a real example of how NOT to do a web site (technically - business-wise, I wouldn't turn their situation down).

    Seriously - go load up amazon.com,  find a product and then view source. What a freakin' bloated, hideous, untidy, wasteful, confused WTF-full mess!

    You mean we're not suppose to embed javascript and CSS inside HTML at seemingly random places?  Seriously though, I think FrontPage makes better HTML than that garbage.  I'm absolutely surprised it actually renders correctly.

     

    The proverbial monkeys at a keyboard (they don't even need to be infinite monkeys - half a dozen for a few hours should suffice) would write better HTML than that.

    56,323 script blocks, 765 CSS blocks, masses of comments, scripts and CSS being inline instead of in their own files (which with traffic like Amazon's has got to be EXPENSIVE), pages and pages of blank CRLF'd lines with random spaces thrown in for good measure, font attributes etc. still being used despite there being more CSS than HTML, and did I mention just how hideous is is in totality? I'm sure that anyone with a few days to spare could go over it with a fine toothed comb and write an essay on just how gadawful it is.

    As you say, it's surprising that it renders correctly (at all).



  • wow

    Even I can do that better.



  • @RayS said:

    The proverbial monkeys at a keyboard (they don't even need to be infinite monkeys - half a dozen for a few hours should suffice) would write better HTML than that.

    56,323 script blocks, 765 CSS blocks, masses of comments, scripts and CSS being inline instead of in their own files (which with traffic like Amazon's has got to be EXPENSIVE), pages and pages of blank CRLF'd lines with random spaces thrown in for good measure, font attributes etc. still being used despite there being more CSS than HTML, and did I mention just how hideous is is in totality?

    The Amazon trading system was written a long time ago when Amazon was much, much smaller and nobody expected it to grow this big. Amazon now has large-company-syndrome and no longer has the ability to build a working software product from scratch, so they can't replace it. A series of organisational disasters have left them barely able to maintain it and without any money to spend on doing anything about it (their development work mainly focusses on other new stuff). It's one of those huge framework systems that nobody in the company really understands.

    There's a book somewhere which documents the history of Amazon and how all this happened - classic corporate tale of woe. Unfortunately I've forgotten what it was called.



  • God, I hate WYSIWYG editors. They are my enemies.

    Some colleage has made a page in Frontpage that I have to put in my Web Application. The horror, the horror. That HTML FP produces is a curse!

    I'm no Notepad elitist, so I just type my HTML in Visual Studio,  which has on-the-fly XHTML validation, I like that. To bad it does not have all validation schemes :( .



  • From the text editors I used, there are two that I would recommend:

    1. jEdit - it has the most complete encoding selection options (I'm pretty convinced it's more versatile than iconv) and as such gives you total control over what lands in your file, and moreover it auto-detects many encodings, which is an unique feature. No, it does not detect UTF-8 by looking for the BOM - the algorithm is more complicated and works. This is probably the only editor you can convince not to save your files in Windows codepages (I hate the cp1250 crap, why couldn't they just use iso-8859-2?). Also very customizable. Downsides are that it hogs memory by default (64MB allocated, 192MB reserved) and you have to tame its appetite manually by editing the shortcut command line, it has a combo box instead of tabs, doesn't support ClearType relying on its own anti-aliasing instead, and looks weird (no native controls).

    2. Crimson Editor - closed source and not updated for ages, but its syntax highlighting can be tweaked to a very large extent by editing simple syntax definition files. Has the option to save non-BOM UTF-8, which is lacking in e.g. Programmer's Notepad 2, and is ESSENTIAL if you wan't to use PHP and sessions / cookies / generated images / output handlers / anything that requires custom headers to be sent. Nice UI, starts quickly, supports ClearType (that is, uses TextOut etc. instead of custom custom font libraries).

    As for the server environment, PHP is easy to use and you can learn how to make useful things very quickly, but takes some time to learn how to use it "the right way". I have little experience with the rest.

    I found out that it really helps to have Apache, PHP and MySQL installed on your dev machine and test your web apps locally before uploading the code. It also eases debugging, because you have access to the MySQL prompt without resorting to horrid and potentially dangerous hacks. It's best if you try to mimick your provider's choice of extensions and configuration, to avoid problems when you happen to have something installed and your provider doesn't.



  • Does ASP.NET produce valid XHTML???

    I tried putting some controls on a webform, execute it, and then validate it through W3's validator, didn't budge.



  • In my opinion, to avoid rampant WTFery, remeber that a Web developer is first a developer. That means that you should focus on learning the underlying principles: object-oriented design; patterns (and anti-patterns), refactoring, testing, scm. All the other advice given so far is good, but once you have the foundation, the rest will fall into place.

     



  • @Lastchance said:

    In my opinion, to avoid rampant WTFery, remeber that a Web developer is first a developer. That means that you should focus on learning the underlying principles: object-oriented design; patterns (and anti-patterns), refactoring, testing, scm.

    Agreed. Web coders can't be cowboy coders just 'cause it's the web, y'all. But with a note of caution:

    Like Procedural and Functional, OO is a design pattern; one that can be supported, enforced or fucked up by the language you're using. So putting OO besides patterns is like putting red besides colours.

    And for webdev, a big OO design is largely overkill, as the lifetime of a web script is usually one page. Every page view is like launching an application. You don't want to build a hyper-correct design and find that a page load is equivalent to running Photoshop. When the user clicks away, everything is garbage anyway.

    That said, I wholly support the idea of classes that one can instantiate manually and then do stuff with. It's just that singeling out and evangelizing OO may lead to over-engineering, since that's what OO good at: structure for big stuff. Goals may just as easily -- often easier, even -- and more efficiently be achieved using principles from the other programming paradigms.



  • I like to do a little OO in Web Projects to avoid headaches.

    I once did:

    MyData::getUsernameFromUserID($userID);

    and then:

    MyData::getAddressFromUserID($userID); 

    Each function would run a query like "SELECT usename FROM user WHERE userID=" . $userID

     

    I figured I could much better to this (not sure if this good PHP code):

    class User

    {

             private string username;

              private string address;

            public User($userID)

            {

                 // define the fields

            }

    }



  • I've read that reply three times now, and it's still not makeing sense.

    However as a general rule, if you've got a static class called MyData, there's something wrong with your design.
     



  • I'm jumping right in, I didn't read every post, so hopefully the discussion is still here :P

     I personally went with PHP over ASP because ASP means Windows. I'm a serious Linux user, and oddly enough, my server runs Linux. (Who'd thunk it?)

     

    The thing with Web development, is you're looking at about 5 languages. 2 of them actual programming languages, the other 3 just rules and such you'll need to learn. They are:

    • PHP (or ASP)
    • JavaScript

     
    And

    • SQL
    • HTML
    • CSS

     And you have to have sufficient mastery of all of them to create something decent. I work with a friend of mine, who does the HTML/CSS, while I do PHP/JS/SQL. (I'm also really bad at picking colors. (My favorite is 9ABCDE -- a neutral blue)

     I code with just Gedit, somewhat equivalent to Notepad on windows, but its much nicer. It does syntax highlighting, tabs, all I need to code. You'll be surprised how different it is to go from an IDE to just a notepad.

     
    Books? Who needs them :P I'm a learn-by-doing type of guy. I dove head-on into programming, and I learned quicker than when I tried to learn other languages. I know books are good, but wait to you have a grasp on what you are doing.


     



  • @zachninme said:

    I'm jumping right in, I didn't read every post, so hopefully the discussion is still here :P

     I personally went with PHP over ASP because ASP means Windows. I'm a serious Linux user, and oddly enough, my server runs Linux. (Who'd thunk it?)

     

    The thing with Web development, is you're looking at about 5 languages. 2 of them actual programming languages, the other 3 just rules and such you'll need to learn. They are:

    • PHP (or ASP)
    • JavaScript

    And

    • SQL
    • HTML
    • CSS

     

    Coo, SQL not a language then?  I spend at least half of my time debugging TSQL or PLSQL and it certainly is one.



  • @TheBigYin said:

    Coo, SQL not a language then?  I spend at least half of my time debugging TSQL or PLSQL and it certainly is one.

    SQL is a vague description of a language. Every DBMS has its own query language, most of which are something vaguely like SQL, but no two of which can reasonably be described as being the same language. Most of them also then contain a second, entirely different, stored procedure language.


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