HiveMinds

chlucy · Dances with Penguins Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 1564

I've been somewhat stalled for the last few years, unable to keep up or learn new technologies/languages due to time constraints. I'm ready to (slowly) learn something new but am a smidge overwhelmed at the choices. My base is PHP/MySQL and I want to start learning something new for web programming, preferably one thing at a time. I have at my disposal the entire Safari/O'Reilly library for online reading so book recommendations are welcome as well as good tutorial sites.

So, if all you knew were PHP/MySQL, a little Javascript, and a basic understanding of XML (very basic, I've only done piddly little things with it) and you wanted to try something new, what would it be?

jmikec · Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:14 am Post subject:

Well, all that cool new Ajax/Web 2.0 stuff is pretty cool. Might look into that.
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Cshark · Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:34 pm Post subject:

Yes, but it's not new. Kind of old hat by the time they had a word for it.
Have you considered server side Java? It kind of feels like a cross between .net and php to me. I've been meaning to pick it up seriously for years now. Haven't gotten around to it though. Too busy being evil. Twisted Evil

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chlucy · Dances with Penguins Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 1564

I've been seeing/hearing a lot about AJAX but one of the things I heard was "don't bother learning it now, it's going to be replaced by X in about a year." Only, I don't remember what "X" was so I didn't know if there was something newer/bigger on the horizon that I should look into.

I'm also curious about Ruby on Rails so I've bookmarked a bunch of articles and tutorials on that (and AJAX) and just today I fiddled around with a Google Maps API and I'm feeling like I'm almost back in the swing of things. I even got around to setting up a del.icio.us account finally.

I just can't seem to wrap my head around Java. I had one (not so great) class that only covered (totally useless) applets and ever since then I've avoided it.

Cshark · Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 12:01 am Post subject:

X?

Do you mean XUL? As in there is no data... only XUL?

I really love XUL as an interface standard. It's bleeping incredible. I wish it were more commonly used though. IE won't support it (last I checked), and there aren't any usable toolkits for it. Which may not necessarily be bad. Just makes people who know it all the more valuable... assuming anyone outside the programming community knew about it that is. For some crazy reason, it reminds me of VB... but everything reminds me of VB in some way.
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caddickj · Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 12:31 am Post subject:

zontar · Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 1:32 am Post subject:

C/C++, XSLT, and shell scripting are high on my list of priorities.

I've been dabbling a bit with all of them, but not seriously.
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chlucy · Dances with Penguins Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 1564

dbmasters · Senior Royalty Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Posts: 2433

AJAX is cool, new or not, it's cool, I've made some pretty neat sites using it, saves bandwidth, stops full page postback...no good for search engines, but still, cool.

Ruby on Rails I personally think is a short lived trend...it's a nitch thing that some rogue elements adopt...I have nothing to base that on other than gut feeling...

I've started doing a lot of Java and XML lately, frustrating from my ASP/PHP background, but it's been educational to say the least...

And I have had some problems I sat for weeks saying "what the hell happened to hiveminds, those folks could help" only to find out a couple days ago it was a friggin domain problem again. I can honestly say I have never been part of a site that has so many domain problems.
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SoopahMan · Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 6:10 am Post subject:

Ruby on Rails seems to be the easiest transition to a modern language for PHP developers. It has a somewhat similar approach as PHP (why use libraries when we can make everything a top-level function!) yet coerces you into a more Object-Oriented structure for your sites than PHP does, and of course, any time you mention it to a Java developer they'll burst into tears, which might give you some glee.

You could also learn .Net, my personal favorite, which is now free to work with - Visual Web Developer Express. That's basically a $3000 piece of software released for free. There also exists a PHP.Net project which lets you put common PHP apps on .Net, letting you integrate .Net and PHP projects together. You can actually write PHP code and compile it against code written in C#, C++, or Visual Basic - it all works.

If you want to stick to PHP the technology continues to offer work, so there are many directions you can go. Mambo and Joomla are both open source PHP CMS's worth taking a look at, for example.

chlucy · Dances with Penguins Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 1564

dbmasters, it's been 2.5 years since you wrote this, but I'm curious to hear your (and others') opinion on RoR today.