

What programming language should I learn? - rrekhi

I know it depends upon what my goals are, but I'm a novice programmer who is simply learning HTML/CSS through CodeAcademy. I plan to move on to Ruby on Rails next so I can be proficient in web development.<p>Does anyone have recommendations for languages that are important to learn for web development? I'm thinking of an ecommerce platform currently. Also, is codeacademy something y'all would recommend, or is there something else I should take a look at?
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dbecker
I personally don't have experience with Ruby on Rails, but it is almost
universally regarded as an excellent option for web development.

If you want something more versatile (for non-web programming), I would
suggest python.

If you go with python, Django is the most popular web framework. However, I
find Flask much easier to get started with.

Both are excellent languages. It is tempting to spend a lot of time
researching the options in the hopes of picking the "best" language. In my
experience, it's better just to pick one and get down to work.

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nyddle
Agree. I've jumped into web development recently and was really amazed with
python, Flask as a framework and Heroku as a hosting platform.

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pedalpete
Rails is a good choice for your server-side code and will stay in fashion for
a good while I suspect.

Don't forget that you're also going to want to know javascript for your front-
end development.

I suspect node.js is going to come on strong over the next few years, but in
most discussions I've been having recently, everybody I've spoken to still
feels it's a bit to early to jump on that bandwagon. But if you want to get
ahead of the curve, node might be the ticket.

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jfaucett
At the risk of being downvoted for suggesting PHP, I'm still going to suggest
it. You're not going to be cool for learning it but now that PHP has
namespaces, a built in server, composer, great frameworks and CMS like
symfony2 and flow3, and ecommerce platforms like magento and OXID, there's
really no limit to what you can do on the server with it. Also, it doesn't
hurt your marketability that the vast majority of all webdev jobs require you
know it.

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rcavezza
I'd second PHP (plus a framework, perhaps). I suggest PHP mostly to avoid
friction. If I had to start w/ setting up rails, I would probably have given
up before finishing the installation.

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mitchi
Javascript or similar compile to JS languages. It has very good performance
thanks to google V8, you can use it on the client side, the server side and
it's a dynamic language so it's easier. It's also similar to C and Java. A
strength if you want to code algorithms or learn C later.

