Best Web Server for Windows and learning various web dev?

[davestar_delux]

Hey, I am looking to just have a play around with a lot of things, databases, web design and some server-side programming - not sure what languages, might want to play with stuff like Hadoop, Splunk...

Just wondering what is a good web-server to get started with quickly? I am just running it on my Windows laptop that I use for my everyday web-surfing and everything else...

I've heard Apache is a bit of a memory hog? True or is it the best choice regardless?

Thanks for any input or suggestions.

 

[davestar_delux]

My laptop is running Win7. I've done PHP 100 times, bit fed up of it.

I like the method where I can just write the page or two I'm making as opposed to RoR where I have to have a bit more awareness of the whole site but just not keen on the language PHP.

I might just go the RoR route though as I can't think what else I want to do.

Don't want to do any ASP or Windows specific as it's useless for my professional/work environments.

But I want to learn to make good Web UIs and work on backend data a lot as well. So I will be investigating and trying to learn lots of Javascript tech - I don't even know jQuery never mind Ext.JS, GWT and the hundreds of other things I hear about.

I would do a Linux VM but the laptop is a bit crummy at running them.

 

[davestar_delux]

Yeah I know, I mean I can set up Apache (with MySQL and some language) but was just wondering if that is still the best route these days or if there was a lighter-weight server.

I don't have any spare PC kit these days, used to have loads when I was more of a hobbyist and this is part of sort of going back to that. I am hoping to get a Raspberry Pi shortly so that would be perfect for all this.