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I'm starting to learn about Flex/Flash and come from a PHP background. It seems that ColdFusion has been the language of choice for Flash/Flex backend. But (the big but for me) I don't plan to build websites that will heavily depend on Flash (for SEO etc.), just websites that will incorporate Flash in small parts of them. I'm thinking for this reason, I'm not going to gain any advantage switching my backend work from PHP to ColdFusion. Since I'm new to the technologies, I'm not sure if that's the right thinking though. Can someone help out comparing PHP vs. ColdFusion (which I'm assuming is Adobe's favorite backend language)? in the context of what I said above would be helpful too. Am I going to be losing a lot of libraries, functionality, convenience, etc. by not doing my backend stuff in ColdFusion.
FWIW. Flash Remoting (AMF) in ColdFusion is much faster than the PHP alternatives. On the magnitude of 40x faster! If performance matters, then ColdFusion is really the only choice.
I have used both CF and PHP for a similar purpose: to execute database queries in the backend from a flash movie front end. These flash movies were, similar to your situation, more or less standalone, not heavily integrated into the website
I found that there is not much that you can acheive with CF that you can with PHP. Database operations are a tad easier to accomplish in CF than PHP, and that's about it. However, if your SQL skills aren't too shabby, this is not much of an issue.
IMHO, your needs are better suited by PHP because it's free, and you can get a WAMP or LAMP rig easily set up as your sandbox. If you just want a sandbox for CF, you either have to pay the sticker price* for the official Adobe software, or get vastly inferior imitations available, such as Railo Server.
Do note that for me, I was able to accomplish database operations on the backend using WAMP/LAMP and Adobe CF, but not with Railo, so that greatly limits your sandboxing experiments with CF. This was 9 months ago though, so you may want to check if Railo has improved since.
As for libraries, there are many more out there available for PHP than CF, due to a much larger developer community. Evidence from Google:
PHP : 15 million hits
CF : 0.5 million hits
In summary: go with PHP.
HTH
Edit:
As mentioned by Al, CF developer's edition is free.
I as well as many others wrote a length answers to ColdFusion Vs PHP which may provide a greater language comparison.
If you only doing small tasks you can stick with HTTP and XML data transfer on the flash side. Unless your moving a lot of data you won't see a great benefit from the AMF ( Adobe Messaging Format ). If you need such binary data transfer PHPAMF is available as is Adobe's open source BlazeDS which comes with ColdFusion and is available separately.
I personally feel you should stick with what ever tool is more comfortable to you. But don't be confused by those who treat ColdFusion as inferior. ColdFusion is a java application as such if you can pull in any and all of the vast java libraries available. Java has more libraries than ANY language even the coveted PHP. Also for development Adobe's ColdFusion is free and well as Railo's Open source offering which bundles with Blaze DS the same open source Java/AMF server that ColdFusion 9 comes with. I personally use Railo and BlazeDs with great success as free open source CFML options.
A few thoughts on the matter, from someone who has developed in both PHP and ColdFusion
ColdFusion has better OO support than PHP5 (or maybe I'm just doing PHP5 OO wrong)
ColdFusion works better with a wide variety of other technologies (Flash/AMF, Databases, LDAP, .NET, Outlook, SMS, SOAP, JSON etc..) out of the box with no addons.
PHP has a smaller memory footprint
PHP is more easily available from shared hosting providers
Having said all of that, if you're looking at building small addons to your website using Flash/Flex there's no reason why you should feel obligated to learn a new language, and redo the rest of your site into CF. PHP will work fine. If you're solely a PHP developer, and you've already got experience with PHP, it might be worthwhile to pick up CFML as a side language, just to open up contracting opportunities, and broaden your horizons, but it's probably not worth it if you're just trying to get this project done quickly, and "the right way"
I'd just like to add another vote for the "Stick with PHP" bandwagon (from an active Coldfusion developer):
PHP is free and has great resources and a good community.
Coldfusion has an ever-decreasing community.
Syntax wise, Coldfusion is an eyesore.
Although Adobe makes both Coldfusion and Flash/Flex, I've found that the advantages to using Coldfusion over PHP for Flash/Flex support are minimal.
As bguiz said, Coldfusion has better support for databases. Specifically, switching from one database to another is easy and painfree. However, once again, the advantages over PHP are minimal.
PHP has full OO support, and support for closures and other helpful functionality.
Learning PHP and using PHP will help you in the future. Learning Coldfusion will (more than likely) make you regret learning Coldfusion.
To me, they are both viable, good options. This isn't necessarily an easy choice, as each language has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Having used both extensively, however, I have to give PHP the edge.
IMO, based on what you're saying (the projects your working on integrating flash and flex with right now only make use of these technologies in small and limited scopes), you'd be insane to switch to CF. That's far too much misery and grief for next to no gain.
That being said, if you ever intend on broadening your scope of usage with these products, you should at the very least concurrently pick up some CF knowledge. If either of these technologies are going to be a significant part of your future development plans, you'll need a knowledge of Coldfusion to determine if switching to Coldfusion is going to provide you with significant ease-of-integration and/or performance benefits.
Unfortunately, there isn't a good online source that can hand-hold you while you learn Coldfusion (like the hundreds that exist for PHP); But finding a Volume 1 for the Coldfusion Web Application Construction Kit (WACK) for either 7 or 8 can give you a good foundation to build on (while I don't know about the CF7 WACK, the Flash and Flex integration are covered in depth in Volume 2 of CF8's WACK; but you'll still need to understand the basics before reviewing that).
Related
I just want to test the waters here. Do you think it would be worth it for a massive-scale social network to be built with Python? Given that Python web development is still fairly experimental at such a large scale, do you think, objectively, that its purported advantages over PHP (high-performance object-oriented execution) would be worth the effort of reinventing a few (or will it be many?) wheels? Using either no framework or a framework like Pyramid (formerly Pylons), not Django.
Given that Python web development is still fairly experimental at such a large scale
This is demonstrably false. TwoThree cases in point: reddit, Disqus, YouTube.
When you hit “massive scale”, you're going to have problems no matter what language/framework/tools you use (although some will certainly make those problems easier to solve).
The more important question is will you be able to get to the point where scale matters?
And that's not a question I, nor anyone else, can answer for certain (although history suggests that the answer is probably “no”)… But, given that any sensible language will scale pretty well, I'd submit that you're more likely to succeed if you're working with a language and toolkit you're already familiar with. So, if you know PHP, use PHP. If you know Python, use Python.
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For a website I need a forum and I'm looking for code written in classic ASP. I know about phpBB and Simple Machines, but that's written in PHP.
I'm used to use (classic) ASP for websites, because I think ASP.NET is to much overkill for simple websites. Or should I definitely switch to PHP? I'm thinking about doing that for some time.
Suggestions?
(So 2 questions)
There is only one that is good, Snitz.
(I would seriously consider moving to .NET though if you want to stay on the MS platform)
I always use Classic ASP, it works beautifully. I tried ASP.net but it was too complex for most website development. ASP.NET keeps changing and require enormous learning curve to keep current. MS switched languages to C# which makes the transition just that much harder.
PHP has an ugly syntax and too many different frameworks which makes it impossible to learn for developer purposes. Good only for intranet applications in my opinion.
Classic ASP is locked down and works perfectly today just as it did years ago. With a few library files, code writing is easy as pie and examples are unlimited on the internet.
Snitz forum is good and so is web wiz forums.
others here
http://www.codango.com/asp/fnc/search/?tree=aspin/software&pg=1&order=desc&qry=forum&cat=all
Stick with Classic ASP if you understand it. It is more rubust, more versatile and will run on any server running IIS. And it can be edited easily and at any time using Notepad or Sharepoint Designer.
I use Classic ASP because I can create much more sophisticated web applications than anyone can using other languages. For forum software it depends on the features that you need. After using or trying most of them I prefer to roll my own.
Classic ASP is getting old and has problems in terms of scalability. I spent over a year converting classic ASP to ASP.NET for a high usage site because we could not get classic ASP to scale.
I know it is hard to change from what you know, but in the world of software - change is a constant. Going to PHP will save allot of problems in the future - it happened with FoxPro where Microsoft just stopped supporting it. So take the step to learn something new.
PHP is open source and still easy to write. It has a wonderful manual online so there is no direct cost in learning. Plus, you can write code directly on the page just like classic ASP, although modern development practices frown upon that.
PHP manual: http://www.php.net/docs.php
Plus you can always ask for help on SO.
Asp.Net is a very powerful language and isn't too different that Asp. It did take a little bit of extra learning, but it was well worth it. was in very much the same boat as you are and can not stand how the WYSIWYG editors reformat all of the HTML. I've spent a very large part of my life using Notepad for all of my programming needs.
I have been using Visual Studio 2008 for my Asp.Net sites since it came out. I do not use the WYSIWYG mode, but rather always view the Source. This allows me to utilize the color coding of the code, provides access to IntelliSense and enables easy formatting. You can quickly comment or uncomment large sections of code, indent large sections instantaniously and pull up help files with the touch of a button. Using the Source Mode only, I have been able to maintain a very clean and usable set of Html, with all of the benefits of the WYSIWYG editors.
Using VS2008 or VS2010, it is not necessary to have any project files or DLLs that you manage, unless you are creating custom DLLs. Your custom controls can be written and accessed through Notepad, without the need to recompile. Personally, I usually open the Website via FTP Server and manage it from there. This does not require FrontPage extensions, but also does not require the separate development Server for using and editing offline.
The Config files are a necessary part of IIS and can be very beneficial. Fortunately, the Web.Config file is used primarily to store the configuration for your specific information such as your Database Providers, Membership Providers and security restrictions. A majority of the Config file is stored in Machine.Config and allows you to minimize the amount of information in it.
As I said, I have spent many years using Notepad and FTP to edit and manage websites. A large problem was always ensuring that the files are continually synchronized and you don't accidentally overwrite the newer files with older ones. Using VS in FTP mode takes care of this for you. Your local files are time stamped and if there is a conflict, VS will ask which edition should be used. Check it out. I think you'll find VS very beneficial.
Asp.Net is also used for the Ajax Control Toolkit, which is essentially an add-on of controls for web development. You can get more information on them at www.asp.net/ajax. They are very powerful and open source. For the bulk of us, you can use the pre-compiled Dll, which is a single file, and upload that to your Bin Folder. Short of that, all you need to do is properly reference the resource in your page and they are usable. It's a very simple process, but can save hours of writing JavaScript and client-scripted controls.
I hope this helps you out.
Scott
I've used WebWizGuide.com in the past, by far the best, still actively supported, free to use (or a paid version is offered.)
The guy Bruce who runs it is extremely dedicated and passionate, and the code behind it is some of the highest quality I have ever seen, and that software which I used to write plugins for is how I got into coding in the first place!
I would definatly recommend this to you.
I recommend you to jump to ASP.net, especially ASP.net MVC (IMO a bright spot in the MS portfolio), but if you want to start with something more simple, more similar to ASP Classic, you can jump to Microsoft WebMatrix
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I'm planning on moving to Python and I have a couple of additional questions along with the title:
did you have more fun with python?
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
what made you change to python?
Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
Your answers would really be useful for us PHP devs wanting something more I guess :)
Thanks in advance!
I was a PHP dev for about 5 years before switching to Python almost exclusively a year ago. The experience has been a mostly positive one; I'll answer your questions but also list a few gotchas I ran into.
Definitely. I continually find surprisingly powerful features/expressions in Python that do a great deal in a small amount of code (yet still being more readable than Perl).
Far more productive. It might just be my style, but Python's functional programming tools, generator expressions, list comprehensions, etc. allow me to accomplish tasks correctly with less code and less time invested than PHP.
I had an analytics project that needed a powerful stats package, so I went with Python+numpy. Then I found Turbogears and loved the syntax. Eventually I discovered coroutines and cooperative multitasking, and there's no going back. I use bottle, gevent, and gunicorn to crank out lean, fast, scalable web apps in record time.
Not if I could help it. PHP's verbose "everything is a long-named function call" syntax is just hard on my eyes at this point. I find it tedious to optimize as well (every page load reinterprets the source code in a default configuration).
Here are a few of the gotchas to be aware of:
For cheap, low-traffic sites, it's much harder to find a web host with a good python environment.
Apache isn't really a typical setup for Python in my experience. Python webapps are usually daemons that are exposed to the public with a reverse proxy webserver in front (nginx is very common). A number of corporate environments balk at new-fangled technology like nginx. It also takes some adjustment to think about your webapps as daemons, and it can take some effort at first to get your daemonizing correct and consistent.
If you use mysql, you will have some pain switching for a while. There just isn't a Python mysql library that is highly compatible with PHP-style mysql queries. For example, most of them don't use the simple "?" syntax for parameterized queries, so you can't just paste your queries over (you have to use printf-style "%s", etc.). Also, just the fact that you actually have to choose and install a mysql library is an extra step over PHP. This no longer bothers me, since I don't use mysql anymore anyway.
This is a broad topic with much, much more to say, but I hope this was helpful.
I'll try my best to answer your questions as best I can:
Did you have more fun with python?
I really enjoy how minimalist python is, having modules with non-redundant naming conventions is really nice. I found this to be especially convenient when reading/debugging other peoples code.
I also love all of the python tricks to do some very elegant things in a single line of code such as list comprehensions and the itertools library.
I tend to develop my applications using mod_wsgi and it took some time to wrap my head around writing thread-safe web applications, but it was really worth it.
I also find unicode to be much less frustrating with python especially with python 3k.
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
For simple websites python can be less fun to setup and use. One nice feature of PHP that I miss with python is mixing PHP and HTML in the same file. Python has a lot of nice template languages that make this easy as well, but they have to be installed.
what made you change to python?
I became frustrated with a lot of the little nuances of PHP such as strange integer and string conversions and so forth. I also started to feel that PHP was getting very bloated with a lot of methods with inconsistent naming schemes. I was referring to the PHP documentation quite frequently despite having a large portion of the php library memorized.
Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
I would develop a PHP project again, it has a lot of nice features and a great community. Plus I have a lot of experience with PHP. I'd prefer to use python, but if the client wants PHP I'm not going to force something they don't want.
Well, I started with PHP, and have delved into Python recently. I wouldn't say that I've "moved to", but I do use both (still PHP more, but a fair bit of Python as well).
I wouldn't say that I have more "fun" with Python. There are a lot of really cool and easy things that I really wish I could take to PHP. So I guess it could be considered "fun". But I still enjoy PHP, so...
I'm more productive with PHP. I know PHP inside and out. I know most of the little nuances involved in writing effective PHP code. I don't know Python that well (I've maybe written 5k lines of Python)... I know enough to do what I need to, but not nearly as in-depth as PHP.
I wanted to try something new. I never liked Python, but then one day I decided to learn the basics, and that changed my views on it. Now I really like some parts (and can see how it influences what PHP I write)...
I am still doing PHP projects. It's my best language. And IMHO it's better than Python at some web tasks (like high traffic sites). PHP has a built in multi-threaded FastCGI listener. Python you need to find one (there are a bunch out there). But in my benchmarks, Python was never able to get anywhere near as as fast as PHP with FastCGI (The best Py performed it was 25% slower than PHP. The worst was several hundered times, depending on the FCGI library). But that's based on my experience (which admittedly isn't much). I know PHP, so I feel more comfortable committing a large site to it than I would PY...
I run a self-developed private social site for 100+ users. Python was absolutely fantastic for making and running this.
did you have more fun with python?
Most definitely.
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
Mostly yes. Python coding style, at least for me is so much quicker and easier. But python does sometimes lack in included libraries and documentation over PHP. (But PHP seems second to none in that reguard). Also requires a tad more to get running under apache.
what made you change to python?
Easier to manage code, and quicker development (A good IDE helps there, I use WingIDE for python), as well as improving my python skills for when I switch to non-web based projects.
Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
Perhaps if I were working on a large scale professional project. PHP is so ubiquitous on the web A company would have a much easier time finding a replacement PHP programmer.
Last year I switched job to get away from PHP and work in Python. I'm very much satisfied with the decision I made :)
To answer the individual questions:
did you have more fun with python?
Yes!
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
More productive I'd say. But the overall increased experience in programming also had something to with that.
what made you change to python?
You are not expected to be a jack of all trades in non-PHP jobs. (Photoshop/Web Design/Flash is required for many PHP jobs, and I hate Flash). And I liked Python/Django a lot.
4. Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
If it's small stuff that's better done without any framework, then yes.
I've never really worked with PHP (nothing major) and come from the .NET world. The project I am currently on requires a lot of Python work and I must say I love it. Very easy and "cool" language, ie. FUN!
.NET will always be my wife but Python is my mistress ;)
yes
yes
curiosity, search for better languages, etc. (actually, I learned them somewhat in parallel many years ago)
yes, if a project requires it explicitly
disclaimer: I never really moved from php.
did you have more fun with python?
Yes. Lot more.
are you as productive as when you're using PHP?
No. I think more.
what made you change to python?
Django.
Would you do a project again in PHP? If so, why?
Only if it is required.
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I'm about to begin my next web development project and wanted to hear about the merits of Lua within the web-development space.
How does Lua compare to PHP/Python/JSP/etc.. for web development?
Any reason why Lua would be a poor choice for a web application language vs the others?
In brief:
Lua gives you a smaller, simpler system that you can understand in its entirety, but it is in a much smaller ecosystem; Kepler is all you get, and you will probably have to build some of your own stuff. I find this easy and fun (I make heavy use of the Lua bindings to the Expat parser and the Lua Object Model, which are part of Kepler), but others may prefer to use what everyone else is using.
PHP started out as more of a macro processor than a language, and although it has improved over the years, when people say "X has really gotten a lot better", I tend to be wary of X. I find PHP offputting, but there is a huge ecosystem for web development.
Python is a nice language but much bigger than Lua, and in the throes of a major revision (transition from 2.5 to 3.x). Again you get a big ecosystem; the problem I have with Python is that the language and system are too big for any one person to understand all of. I don't like to be in this situation if I don't have to.
Ruby is a bit of a cleaner language design, and the large Rails ecosystem is a winner. Ruby is less complex than Python but more complex than Lua. Rails is a bit of a beast.
It comes down to this question:
Would you rather understand all the software in your system, even if you have to build a lot of things yourself?
Or would you rather have a lot of things already built for you, even if you wind up not understanding exactly how every piece works?
If you want to understand everything, Lua is your game. If you want a lot of stuff already built for you, I can't advise you how to pick among PHP/Python/JSP/Rails and so on.
More on Lua and Python at Which language is better to use, Lua or Python?
Using Lua for web development is pretty rare...you could do it, but it will be a lot more time consuming than using a language that has matured as a web developing language (PHP) or has good web related libraries (python/ruby/etc.) If you do go with Lua, this means you may end up "recreating the wheel" a lot for what may be easily available in mature web languages.
The better question is, what does Lua offer that you need which is not offered in the other languages you listed? Or do you want to help Lua become a better web development platform by creating a Lua MVC framework like Rails did for Ruby?
The Kepler project is probably the best known starting point for web application development in Lua. They have a mailing list whose archives will have a lot of discussion of the merits of various approaches.
The Kepler site is itself built in a CMS framework called Sputnik written almost entirely in Lua, and based on the Kepler project.
The typical approach with Lua is to use a language suited to interfacing to various system components to implement those interfaces, and to use Lua for business logic and glue. Kepler provides libraries written largely in C that provide access to file systems, databases, and the network to Lua code. It also provides a defined API layer to interface with the web server, with implementations for Apache, any CGI capable server, and Xavante which is a complete web server implemented mostly in Lua.
I'm coming a little late ... but i wanted to throw in another language: Haxe
why?
Haxe is an open source language, driven by a quite small, but active community
Haxe is a platform indepented language ... targets are:
flash player 6-8 and 9-10 bytecode or ActionScript 3 source code
JavaScript source code
PHP source code
NekoVM bytecode or Neko source code (NekoVM is a lightweight and extensible VM, suitable for both server developement, and desktop apps)
C++ source code
Android Java source code is currently being worked on
this means, that as a web developer, you can write both rich clients as well as servers in the same language ... the same code can be later reused for desktop/mobile apps
Haxe is a very expressive and powerful language, featuring:
first class functions (anonymous functions and methods, which are the same in Haxe) and closures as well as Enums with parameters (much like algebraic types) that allow the use of functional approaches
good type system, including generics, structural subtyping etc. ... to simplify its use, the compiler has a very helpful type inference, that ensures code is strictly typed, but saves you a lot of redundancy (variable type is determined by initialization, function return type by type of returned expressions) ...
cross-platform API, including everything from dynamic arrays, to reflection/introspection and a remoting package, that alows you to send whole objects from client to server, from one platform to another ...
consistent and radical language design ... of course it has a few flaws, but these mostly come from the fact, that it targets extremely different platforms ...
girls love it and it'll make you real rich ... :D
the biggest flaw about Haxe is, that it allows untyped coding, at the cost of platform specific execution of untyped code ... when well typed (which is not a lot of work with Haxe in fact), code will be executed the same way on all platforms ... if not, result vary depending on runtime handling of the platform itself ...
to put it in a few words: it's a great language, that allows you to target many platforms ... it's young, it's growing, and you can participate ...
If it's only the language, then I agree with Norman. If the web development framework is important to you, then you have to consider Ruby because RoR is a very mature framework. I love Python, but there seems to be quite a few frameworks to choose from, none of them is dominant. CherryPy, Django, Pylons, web2py, Zope 2, Zope 3, etc. One important indicator to me is that there are more RoR jobs on the market than any other (language, framework).
As far as Lua web frameworks, there is also LuCI. It is mostly used for small embedded systems. We're just starting a project using it, so I can't comment on it too much right now. We're just doing some simple configuration screens similar to what is already provided as examples, so I'm sure it will be sufficient for our needs.
I've been doing html, css and javascript for quite a long time, mostly for my very own enjoyment. I would say I know fairly much, I've created many simple games and apps and experiments with javascript. However there is only so much that is possible to do in the browser, for any more "complete" websites I am constantly confronted with my ignorance on server side programming.
So, what do I need. I need to get my head around how to use databases and how to use some server side programming language, I guess. What is the right choice? What should I avoid?
Thanks.
PHP and MySQL have a pretty low barrier to entry (they're both free and ubiquitous). I'd start with those, since most hosts provide them for you. As an added bonus, they work really well together (and PHP isn't very hard to learn coming from a web development background).
Head First SQL is a great book for learning MySQL. All of the examples in the book are done on MySQL. The book even explains where to get it and how to install it. As for PHP, the introductory tutorial at official website is the best place to learn it.
Update: Head First PHP & MySQL is now available. I haven't read this one yet, but other books in the series and by the same author are great for learning new languages from scratch.
Download Python. Learn the Python language. Learn Object-Oriented programming.
Python includes SQLite, this makes it easier to Learn the SQL language.
Download the Django framework. This makes it easy to write server-side applications that work simply and reliably.
I would suggest PHP. Not because it's the best, most modern or cleanest language out there, but because it is easy to learn for someone coming from pure HTML.
You begin by just adding tiny bits of PHP to your regular HTML and magic happens :)
Ruby is a fantastic language and the frameworks for web stuff generally teach you some good practices. Try it. The Learn to program book uses Ruby, maybe you'd like to check it out.
I noticed in your question you mention that you've been using javascript. If you're comfortable progamming javascript, I've recently begun working with server side javascript in the form of EJScript on linux and using jscript on windows. It's been fairly painless, and the documentation has been pretty good so far on both.
If you're more interested in learning this with another technology then Django & Python or ASP.NET & C# (or IronPython) are both fairly low barrier to entry platforms available on windows, *nix, etc...
I would say that if you're comfortable working in Linux, then go for PHP and MySQL. If you aren't comfortable working in Linux, then download the free Visual Web Developer version of Visual Studio Express, and get started using that. This lets you program in VB.Net or C#, and use the .Net web development framework. It's really miles ahead of anything PHP in terms of how nice a platform it is to work on. There's also a free developer edition of SQL Server that lets you store up to 4 GB of data.
There's plenty of .Net hosts out there now too. Although, due to increased license costs, Windows hosting plans will usually cost more and give you less space/bandwidth than Linux hosting plans, you can still get enough room to play around with and deploy some apps on the web. If you develop something really cool, and outgrow what your hosting account provides, it's probably time to upgrade to a VPS, and post ads on your site to start paying the bills
I'd recommend PHP for folks who are familiar with HTML but are newish to programming. Here's why:
I'm currently an ASP.Net developer, and I think that ASP.Net abstracts waaaaay to much to make it a good first programming environment. I say learn how to generate and manipulate straight HTML with a language like PHP instead of trying to understand GridViews, etc., which have no bearing or relevance to programming in the broader sense.
I wouldn't say ASP.Net is "the Dark Path" or anything, but if you start out by learning it, you'll tend to favor the warm and insulating arms of the framework. ASP.Net is pretty much a code-generator when compared to more explicit (some would say reckless, messy, and tedious, but I'm not one of them) methods like PHP.
With PHP you'll see the effect your code has on the actual HTML when you view source. With an ASP.Net page, you'll be baffled by the amount and complexity of the HTML it spits out.
After you get your hands dirty in PHP, you can explore the pros and cons of frameworks like ASP.Net that "do a lot of the work for you".
I was exactly in your situation 3 to 4 years ago and, like some of the commentators suggest, I tried PHP because of its low barrier of entry.
That was a mistake! Oh sure I was able to achieve some things here and there, including using a contact form from a book which was so flawed that it was later hijacked by big time spammers and got my domain banned from most email servers out there.
Later on I tried to learn how to create dotabase driven sites with object oriented programming following the guidance of the excellent books, blog posts, and forums from Sitepoint and other sources. It was just too hard for my little brain. I just could not do it.
So what happened? 2 1/2 years ago I decided to learn Rails, which had just turned v. 1.1. It has been fun since the beginning and extremely rewarding. Working with Ruby is a pleasure, much easier to learn than PHP, and the Rails framework is so well put together that you can, with little effort, produce some very elaborate web sites with advanced features all while learning how to do proper object oriented web programming.
I used my new knowledge to recreate from scratch the site of my non-profit organization (with a new domain ;-) and, with a friend who is a talented designer, created a web development firm.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that easy, if you want to learn programming you need to put a lot of effort into it but in my own experience Rails can bring you some instant results while letting you get deeper and deeper over time.
I recommend two main sources of knowledge:
The excellent, official Rails
guides.
The free screencasts
from Railscasts.
Whatever your choice will be I wish you the best and a fun and fulfilling experience
I recently came upon this question myself. I really liked the way PHP integrates with HTML making designing a site more natural in my opinion. Design your site as you would with static content and then switch the static with the dynamic. However, I wanted to choose a "good" language. I looked at PHP, Ruby, Perl, and Python, as they are the most popular, open source options. I didn't need any powerhorses, if you will, like Ruby on Rails or Django, since I just wanted to mess around with server side stuff and some SQL—nothing serious. I don't remember why nor do I care to remember why, but I chose Python. But I still wanted that integration with HTML. I came across Karrigell. It's a neat piece of Python that essentially handles the integration. It comes with a little web server which you can use on its own or use something like mod_proxy with lighttpd. The devs don't limit you to only Python inside HTML, though. Their server parses: Python inside HTML, HTML inside Python, plain ol' Python scripts, and Karrigell services. It may not integrate as well as PHP does, but it's pretty damn good.