For the budding web developers out there (in Off-topic)

I had to do some development in PHP this week: my level of frustration with a tool has never been higher. I vented a bit by writing why PHP sucks -- if I save one young mind from PHP my suffering will not have been in vain. :)

Just remember, you could've had to do it in Java. ;)

At least that looks good on a resume, though. :)

True. Most employers are going to assume you worked on a half-decent webgame if you mention PHP. ;)

Lately though, I've felt like there are so many html-generating languages out there that it's nearly impossible to be very proficient in all of them. Another dilemma is deciding which one to go with without reading biased reviews as some have multiple strengths and weaknesses.

Ha! Well, I have heard good things about PHP but just what I read is enough to deter me. And yes, I'm a budding web developer. Your message has reached me.

Go figure. My language of choice is java - maximum power, maximum portability.
HTML generation? Bah, write the HTML and generate the content =)

I'm gonna use the little that I've done programming and try to dumb this down:

"The reason PHP sucks, is that instead of creating a code with purpose, they just created a code and continue to give it crazy random features. Also, at the same time, every new version changes so much basic stuff that the old stuff doesn't run right. Like speaking Latin to someone all their life, and then trying a modern romance language. Close, but not close enough."


right?

Jon must be really hate php, he even posted this on teamliquid.net for all you BW junkies like I. :)

I program alot in PHP, and I see the problems with it. Especially the whole "lets-change-some-core-concepts" mindset of the developers so its difficult to upgrade to the next version. I really don't like the php config file either.

Anyways, there was something I was wondering, which of the web languages out there is fastest for what? Anyone have any links for that? I was wondering because, many people like to compare the languages alot, but most of the time they just talk about little eccentricities in the language that, beyond being annoying, can be accounted for.

Verifex: When it really comes down to it, for server side scripting, ASP, JSP, and PHP are pretty much the same. If you learn one, you can easily do the others. The syntax are very similar to one another. (Except perhaps in the case of JSP which can use servlets)

JSP is ugly as sin.

ASP.NET is pretty decent, but some things don't work the way you'd expect.

Spyce is my current weapon of choice.

See also this comparison of spyce and asp.net.

I used to know of a page that actually compared languages. I'll try to dig it up tonight and post.

Language Comparisons: http://tinyurl.com/9qhqm

Finally used Tiny URL after Jons love of reminding me that I didn't. =P

No one told me if I was right :(

nice blog, totally hit home with me today. I spent several hours today putting an existing php script on a new computer (same os, slightly newer php version), well several hours trying to figure out why it wouldn't work on the new computer. we pass parameters and it wasn't getting them, but didn't throw any errors when we referenced the parms! tough! apparently, the newer version of php on the new computer required $_REQUEST["parm"] instead of just $parm. and that was the whole problem. i don't use php much so this may have been easier for someone who uses it everyday, but for me it was a very frustrating morning trying to figure that out :(

Any of you familiar with Ruby language?
Ruby

we actually looked at ruby but decided to go with python due mainly to the python books lying around, mod_python, the mysqldb module, and the fact that our profox (MS Visual foxpro) mailing list had a python mailing list for help. we got raceinvestor.com up and running in under a year using python/mod_python w/mysql backend (I had no python experience and the other programmer had only a couple of tutorials under his belt) I was impressed at how easy it was to work with. Hard to explain but it just "felt" right. of course it has some quirks but workarounds are easy. We are working on another project but haven't gotten to the point of making the decision yet as to what language we'll use. We are trying to find a way to incorporate the Twisted framework (python) into it, but we like trying out new languages, and I'd love to give something like ruby a shot.

Ruby is like a cleaner version of Perl -- both have "there's more than one way to do it" as a central philosophy. This leads to difficult-to-maintain code when more than one person gets involved.

I could live with it if I had to, particularly since all the Ruby people I've met are friendly guys (I've been to a couple user groups) but it wouldn't be my first choice.