What's the best web scripting/programming languague to learn?

[Hullboy]

I have to do an intranet site at work, and I want to make it interactive to pull in and stimulate the imagination of end-users (is there anything that can do that? )

Trouble is, I'm reading into this today, and discovering a host of options, such as VBScript, Java applets, and JavaScript.

The book I'm using is a couple of years old, so the author can only speculate about future trends which are reality today! This guy loved Java, which I know is all the rage right now, but if you had to learn a script/language for the future, which would you choose, and why??

I'm just starting out in IT so any future-proof knowledge is a real bonus. By the way, don't crucify me if I got the terms wrong, but please do educate me!!!

Thanks in advance........

 

[gittyup]

You may also want to look at Java Servlets if you are doing interactive stuff.

 

[Hullboy]

Gittyup

Damn, that was a quick response!

Are servelets applets which are run from the server, rather than the client?

**Edit** my lazy ass just looked this up, so don't trouble yourself with the servlet definition!

Also, although I'm grateful for the info, can you or others recommend somewhere useful and future-proof for a newbie to start out? I know nothing's truely future-proof, but please try to factor this consideration into your response.

Thanks

 

[gittyup]

Servlets are not applets. Servlets are replacement for CGI programming. You can call Java classes from with straight html.

Here is one of many links that talk about servlets.

link1
link2

 

[Hullboy]

gittyup

thanks for the links, they look very thorough but well explained. I'll trawl through them tomorrow, as my eyes have nearly dried up now.....

you seem like you have your finger on the pulse, so please can you or someone answer my first question, relating to starting out as a newbie in something that looks like it will last! or is this question hopelessly naive???? but, like I said, please try to factor this into an answer!

thanks!

 

[squirtle24]

JSP and servlets have a strong presence, but so does PHP and ASP. I don't know much about PHP, but all three of these are supposedly very close in terms of what you can accomplish.

As far as being futureproof is concerned, all three are probably safe bets. You should be more concerned with what webserver you have and whether or not it supports your language choice. What you already know is also another consideration.

I think Java's definitely worth learning if you're going the IT route, and you can get some real Java experience doing this. So of the three, I'd go with JSP and servlets.

 

[DaHitman]

Man...by far and away you want to learn ColdFusion, Perl or PHP...

Probably the best would be PHP is taking off IN A HUGE WAY!! ITS soo flexable and has so much built in power that its taking off like dynamite in the web development world.

Coldfusion is probably the most popular web development language for corporate use.

And perl is just all out great.. there is so much stuff out there for perl, that you can draw on many years of people already having done most anything you want to do before and can find examples on how to do just about anything to get you going.

 

[Elledan]

Start with PHP. It's by far the most easy to learn scripting language and it'll take you only a few weeks to learn it

 

[KalFlarg]

Go with ColdFusion if you have the cash to buy the server or if you can convince the company to buy it. It really is great and in my opinion is even easier then PHP. PHP has the advantage of being free. Another consideration involves your servers. ColdFusion works fine for winNT or unix or pretty much anything where PHP (I'm not sure about this) is strictly UNIX or at least was developed primarily for UNIX.

Either of these to languages are really great. They are easy to learn and the limits of what they can do are only your imagination. Check out ColdFusion at Allaire.com and PHP at PHP.net

Good luck!

 

[joinT]

my vote goes to Cold Fusion - SO EASY !

 

[dcpsoguy]

Another vote for Coldfusion- Extremely powerful and a very easy syntax to learn!

 

[DAM]

start with PHP, by far one of the very very popular and strong community behind it.


ASP if you want to be tied down to MS, although there is a apache plugin.





dam()

 

[n0cmonkey]

No one else has mentioned it so I will. perl is a big language right now. Not only can you do all the cool little webpage scripting things, but you can write a whole lot of more useful applications and whatnot with it. The problem I have with the language is it appears to generally be a cluster f*ck. From what I have seen PHP is nice and simple. I don't know much about asp, but it's another biggie.

Bonus for perl and PHP is they are free and atleast perl (dont know about php) is ported to most operating systems out there (and ships installed by default on most UNIX-like operating systems).

 

[dcpsoguy]

Bottom Line: What is the purpose of your site? Different purposes, for different languages. Let me know what your purpose is, and Ill let you know which is the best? Do you want a database as a backend for your applications?