Coding - Which way to go?

Slogan

Slogan

Slogan

Soldato
Joined
27 Jun 2006
Posts
6,331
Hi,

I've posted a few threads in here about coding before - and the advice has always been useful to say the least, but I'm still confused in relation to the whole 'coding scene'.

I've picked up several books in the past 2 years to aid the craving to learn. I picked up a CSS book and made decent use of that and I picked up a MySQL book and never really went past the first couple of pages, because I wasn't really 'that' interested. Or I was lazy.

It has only been recently that I've sort of discovered ASP.net and its uses - writing it in something like VisualBasic strikes me as being more appealing than Notepad - although probably still limited to 'user knowledge' as most coding is.

I've yet again got the urge to learn and I'm often coming up with (what I believe to be) good ideas for websites - with no tools or cash to ever put them even to close to being in action. It's frustrating but I can't just expect to know the languages, as people have strained over monitors (sounds wrong) for months and years trying to earn these skills.

I don't really want to go down a road that isn't populated - just how good are the lifespans and potential of the likes of ASP.net, PHP, MySQL, MSSQL, CSS and XHTML?

I don't really minding spending a bit of money (which I understand ASP.net is relative to), infact it'll probably push me to learn even more.

As for anyone who works in this profession full time, what did you find was the best method of learning? Videos? Books? Browsing? Tutorials? Let me know.

Apologies for what must be an insanely dull post - I just wish to make databased websites and want to actually go in some direction rather than doss about and learn nothing like the last two years.

Thanks for any help at all, much appreciated.
 
Hey Slogan, I work as a PHP part time but I often get week long projects.

TBH I know nothing about ASP.net so im just going to sail right over that.

Im expecting PHP to be mainstream for the next 4/5 years but with upcoming languages such as ruby adding a whole new layer of interactivity to websites its difficult to predict whats going to happen.

I used to be a VB programmer which I did for a hobby but web programming i find much more fun than VB and it allows you to make useful things that people can actually use ( unlike my 500 revisions of a MSN wannabe ). MySQL i think will be around for a long time, MySQL 5 came out quite recently and doesn't change very much in relation to the query standard. Its really hard to predict these things because you really can't tell what will take off.

When i was learning PHP i actually read this guide to get me going http://www.tizag.com/phpT I had friends who already worked full time as PHP programmers who gave me nudges along the way. I already knew VB well by this point which made PHP very easy to pick up once you know all the programming principles. Feel free to add me on msn i'l pass on the nudges :) [ xfire: thetomcake as in your sig ] seeing as im on holiday for the next 15 weeks :D :D

PHP along with all other web based programming languages bring massive security risks you don't get in VB such as SQL Injection and RFI etc. Good to learn about these early and get in the good practices when your learning, makes less need to adapt afterwards.

Anything else you would like to know please don't hesitate :)
 
I would download the express (free) version of visual studio 2005 as this is a great environment to develop code with. It supports all Microsoft technologies.

I learnt to code by thinking of programs I would find useful and then trying to develop them in c++ etc. and tried to incorporate as many different aspects of coding as I could. Eventually these programs became quite powerful with many features and I learnt a lot from it.

From your post it seems your more interested in web development but the principals are the same. I would give yourself tasks and draw up design specifications for yourself. Then try and fulfil the specification. You will find you will be much more interested if the end product is actually something you would want to use to.
 
asp.net and sql are going knowhere.

the advice everybody else gives is correct

make your programs that you need. chances are others need them too. and keep doing it as much as possible.

youll pick it up.
 
If you really want to be a web developer then the market is looking pretty rosy at the minute, but you need experience on the job to be considered. Getting a full time web-development role is only really an option if you have a history in the industry or a good portfolio of past work to show.

Some people can read programming books, do the examples and feel like they're making progress but I've never really been one of them. If you're the same then you need to set yourself a goal; choose a project that you can work towards that will help you judge the strides forward you're taking.

Start simple - don't expect to dive straight into the latest "Web 2.0" (ick) trends and have fancy animated menus flying all over the place. Don't even attempt any dynamic stuff until you have the absolute basics down.

Get yourself a decent text editor (lots of free ones, see the sticky) and learn xhtml. You don't need a book, there are more than enough great resources online (again, see sticky). Learn how to write clean, valid XHTML - it's incredibly simple. Your first goal should be a simple static site with a couple of pages linked together.

Move onto CSS. Again, plenty of resources online, no need to purchase a book. Look at other sites for ideas, check out their CSS, steal it, play with it, modify it. Mastering CSS will take much longer than learning XHTML but once you have the basics then you can continue on to other things and keep learning CSS alongside them. Re-do your static site with a nice layout and colour scheme, make it look like a proper site.

If you get this far then it's time to choose a scripting language.

ASP is dead, avoid it.

ASP.net is a good choice career-wise as there always tend to be lots of jobs available. If you go this route then you'll also have to decide which underlying language to use. I'd probably choose C# over Visual Basic because it's more modern, and well, just plain better ;)

PHP is becoming hugely popular commercially, in the space of a year I'd say the market (in terms of number of positions available when I was looking in the North West) has probably doubled or tripled. It's also maturing well and there are some pretty decent frameworks available that make it much more ideal for large projects than it used to be. It also has excellent documentation and support online.

Then you've got the fringe players, Ruby (usually with Rails), Python, JSP (huge in some industries at the enterprise level but doesn't seem to have much representation in the SMB market). I can't really comment too much on these as I haven't had much experience with them. Ruby is (or was) the "up and coming" starlet language a year or two back but the enthusiasm seems to have wanned a little. I'm sure it's excellent but finding a job will be more difficult than one of the big two.

Once you've chosen, then for this part I'd suggest buying a book. You still won't have to purchase any software because you can run them all on your local machine for free (assuming you have WindowsXP or greater in the case of ASP.net). At some point you will want proper hosting but for development purposes it's unecessary.

When it comes to databases, they all pretty much speak the same language (SQL) which is what you'll have to learn to talk to them. Just pick a free one (MySQL / Postgres) and don't worry too much about it. A lot of the time in the real world you'll find this choice is already made for you because it's what the client already uses. At this point you should be developing a dynamic site that stores it's content in a database and can manipulate user input from forms.

If you get this far then you won't need me to tell you what to do next, you'll be looking into ajax and various other newer technologies.
 
Have to agree with LazyManc, I find it easiest to get to know a technology by starting a project and learning as I go.

I'm a C# developer, probably wouldn't recommend self teaching from books unless you're really motivated.

In terms of the future of .NET, the next two incarnations (3.0 + 3.5) are just around the corner along with the IDE which is bound to be called Visual Studio 2007.
They're are things afoot on the web and windows fronts.

You only need to put they keyword developer in monster.co.uk and you'll find hundreds of c# positions.

Just thought I'd say as well that you need XP Pro for full IIS functionality.
 
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Wow - far more responses than I had expected on refresh. Thanks to everyone. :)

My plans wouldn't be to take this up as a job - I understand the web-design business is a heavily congested one and I probably wouldn't be creative enough to compete currently.

However, I definitely would like to take this up as a hobby, perhaps progress to working part-time (like Jaffa - added, by the way) and if I enjoy it that much, then go down the route of finding full time work for it.

For now it's just a hunger to create websites that I dream up - actual pages to wrap around my forums and so on. Online Content Management, but I'd obviously prefer to make it myself so I know all the ins and outs.

I'll do a bit more research before deciding on a platform, as it's a pretty important part - but appreciate the suggestions.

In regards to safety - how goes PHP go? I gather most types of code are safe-ish when kept up to date and written properly - but is it a case of regular updates? Are they easily implemented and so on?

Thanks once again.
 
Web languages are as safe as the software you write, it doesn't matter what language you use if you're not paying attention to security. PHP has an active development community which patches and tweaks the code on a regular basis, but you don't have to stay constantly up to date with the most recent version and most hosts won't unless a major exploit has been discovered (which is very very rare).

Updating your PHP version shouldn't be a big issue between minor versions. If you learn from a PHP5 book then you should be fine.

Just as an aside - there is a difference between the roles web designer and web developer, very few people are great at both. Designer roles will expect different skill sets centered on the visual side, i.e. xhtml / css / photoshop / flash / etc, programming skills will be less or non-important.

There are plenty of jobs about if you're good and you have the portfolio / CV to back it up. There are also plenty of cowboys out there who don't know their <b> from their <em>, which is why companies are becoming more discerning.
 
Jaffa_Cake said:
Im expecting PHP to be mainstream for the next 4/5 years but with upcoming languages such as ruby adding a whole new layer of interactivity to websites its difficult to predict whats going to happen.
Click to expand...
Could you expand on that a little?
 
jdickerson said:
Could you expand on that a little?
Click to expand...

I think there's a little confusion - Ruby itself doesn't do anything special from a web perspective, but the Rails framework that's used with it provides some nice functionality relatively easily, which may include the "interactivity" he was talking about.

I'm assuming he means what's come to be branded as ajax, i.e. "doing things" without a page load, but this is language independent and can be used in conjunction with any server-side scripting language.
 
LazyManc said:
Web languages are as safe as the software you write, it doesn't matter what language you use if you're not paying attention to security. PHP has an active development community which patches and tweaks the code on a regular basis, but you don't have to stay constantly up to date with the most recent version and most hosts won't unless a major exploit has been discovered (which is very very rare).

Updating your PHP version shouldn't be a big issue between minor versions. If you learn from a PHP5 book then you should be fine.

Just as an aside - there is a difference between the roles web designer and web developer, very few people are great at both. Designer roles will expect different skill sets centered on the visual side, i.e. xhtml / css / photoshop / flash / etc, programming skills will be less or non-important.

There are plenty of jobs about if you're good and you have the portfolio / CV to back it up. There are also plenty of cowboys out there who don't know their <b> from their <em>, which is why companies are becoming more discerning.
Click to expand...


Thats where I am hoping to come in.

Just started a job 3 weeks ago as PHP developer for a large company ( a lot larger than I thought, £300k a month they earn!) and I'm working alongside a designer picking up a few things from him aswell as my uni course teaching me abit about design adding to what I already know.
Hopefully I will soon be proficient in PHP/MySQL aswell as CSS XHTML and photoshop which will mean I can get a decent level of work.

PHP/MySQL isnt that hard to learn, Ive known it for 3 months and found a job after 2 months which is paying me £13k pa for a 2month contract as I am a student and they have offered a placement. But a lot of companies do seem to need people who know XHTML and PHP as most sites, even those 1year ago are using tables and bodged PHP.
 
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