I want to start building websites and charging people for them!
My problem is that the stack that know well does not lend itself to quick development, or cheap hosting.
I am looking for languages that satisfy the following criteria:
Fast to develop in
Can find cheap hosting for it
Bonus points if it can also be 'enterprisey'
Fast to develop in: When building a web application, what makes a language quick to develop in is a framework. Some languages that have a very robust web application framework include: Java, Ruby, PHP, Python.
Can find cheap hosting for it: PHP is probably the most ubiquitous language in terms of web hosting support. More web hosts are adding support for Ruby and Python frameworks such as Rails and Django, though.
Bonus points if it can also be 'enterprisey': Not quite sure what you mean by that. But for some reason Java comes to mind.
Use a framework such as drupal
I have done a few sites on the side as well and have wanted cheap hosting, speedy development etc.
I ended up just using GAE simply because:
You can use either Python/Java (both are widely used)
You can used current web frameworks (Django etc.)
It's free hosting (until the site starts hitting the free quota limits)
Deployment is easy
One downside could be that you're tied to BigTable so if you wanted to move your site to something else you might have some work there.
(I'm not advocating for GAE, just have used it for a few sites and it has worked pretty good for what was required)
I'd recommend PHP. It's well supported, quick to learn, and relatively common among small web hosts.
Your requirements are super-vague... But to recommend something different, try out the Ruby on Rails - it is really fast, can get enterprisey and there is at least heroku.com for hosting.
Related
Just wondering what pro web developers use to publish their sites. Also I would like to know what big sites have used, such as Amazon, Walmart, etc.
Thank you for your time.
It's a difficult question to answer, I guess. The tools used by a developer depends on the customer requirements. It may be one of the following:
Static site with graphics and/or flash (simple business site)
Dynamic site with front-end html/CSS and database driven backend using php, perl, .net, Java, etc.
A large site that may use ecom along with content management system (CMS). There you may need CMS (such as Joomla) along with compatible plug-ins and customization.
For very popular sites such as Amazon, speed and bandwidth are very critical. Usually, though they start small (say, using PHP/MySQL, or ready-made CMS), they change according to their own requirements sooner or later using custom coding (Java is very popular). This is only my guess!
For co-ordination and publishing, GIT is very popular.
hope this helps.
I would like to start a new project that consists of multiple tiers, the web tier, event-driven business logic, data processing, etc. I had worked on PHP and Java-based projects for the past few years and speaking from experience, Java (and given the open source libraries to achieve scheduling, ORM, AOP, etc.) is usually a good choice - and of course, you DON'T ALWAYS need a container as different tiers and services can be written with different languages, integrated, together with other processes such as cron jobs.
Now, given that I am starting a new project, I am wondering how would others advice me on the language choice. I am trying to find some answers from Python, Ruby, Erlang Google searches, but certainly this is a good place to collect some good advices and criticisms.
Thoughts?
What I use regularly is the omnipresent LAMP stack (Linux, Apache web server, MySQL database, PHP server logic) and if I need to do something more intensive on the backend, such as processing lots of language data, or running network commands and sorting the output before feeding it back into the system, I use Perl. All of these utilities/languages are available in almost every distribution's repositories, as well as the connector code to use them all together (php5-mysql, for instance, to import PHP functions that allow you to use MySQL).
UPDATE: I would like to add a few ideas to this answer, since someone upvoted it and called my attention to it today. When I wrote this, I was experimenting with a few different technologies, and in many ways I still stand by what I said earlier. LAMP is vastly more mature than any other web platform out there. It's still true that you just can't go wrong starting with this combination.
That being said, a year later, I have been using Nginx and Python (through uWSGI) quite a lot for my personal projects. I think now distro support for both of these technologies is mature enough that people with significant site traffic should genuinely consider switching out Apache with Nginx. It serves static resources FAR faster than Apache. If you want to use PHP, you will probably be using php-fpm to connect PHP to Nginx. If you want to use Python -- which is fast becoming one of my favorite languages, both for its performance and its language features that have grown on me -- you will have a huge choice of options to choose from in order to connect Nginx to Python, but I highly recommend uWSGI for the simple fact that it's tested and it's very fast. As for databasing, I still think MySQL is broadly-powerful enough to suit many different situations. If you disagree with this statement, I'm sure you are experienced enough to search for many thorough resources showing pros and cons for almost any situation.
Let me introduce myself a bit.
I have 7 years of C++ (most MFC) experience, 1 year C#.NET and 2 years Java experience.
I know little about web application, what I did and am doing is Windows desktop applications.
I start to do some (minor) (freelance) side projects in the past half year and uses C# mostly as it's more "rapid" than MFC. But seems there's more web projects in this market than desktop projects. And I do not feel good as long as I do not know web development.
So, should I touch the new web filed for me or just stay focus in desktop application but learn more e.g Python, or Frameworks/Libraries such as Qt or Boost?
My gut feeling is that more and more people/companies are moving their projects to the web. My company, for example, has added numerous web applications since I have been there. Another prime example of this is Microsoft (yes, even them) providing a web-based version of Office, their flagship product.
There will always be a need for desktop applications, but I see more web-based projects in the future. It's always good to learn something new, anyway.
EDIT: Oh, and you don't lose anything by being aware of "desktop-based" processes. You may be doing more server-side programming, even if it is web-based. So, in other words, it doesn't hurt to continue expanding your knowledge in that arena, as well.
There will most likely still be a market for desktop applications for many years to come. However, web development seems to have taken over a large share of the development market from what I can see. I would recommend definitely getting familiar with web development as it definitely can't hurt to increase the number of skills you have even if you never stop writing desktop apps.
Since you have experience with C# you might want to consider doing some ASP.NET work. Or if you feel the need to learn a new technology then maybe consider a framework like Ruby on Rails.
I'd really suggest looking into web development - like you said, there are many more web application projects - and you already know C#.NET and Java, and both of those languages have really good API's / frameworks for web development. ASP.NET for C# and Java Servlets/JSPs.
I'd first suggest learning some really basic HTML to learn how pages are rendered, then try to make dynamic versions using the language of your choice. Then I'd learn some other web technologies like CSS/Javascript/some Javascript libraries - then I'd start looking at frameworks that build on top of the basics in the language of your choice.
Oh, and some further suggestions - there are web frameworks that are component-based rather than request-based - you may be tempted to learn these as a shortcut to web development since most claim that developing in them is similar to desktop development. I really wouldn't suggest this - as in practice you really do need to know how the web works at a lower level to develop custom components, include things that the framework doesn't do, or to debug them when things go wrong even when using these frameworks. If you jump right in you can get lost/confused pretty quickly.
Microsoft Office 2010 will have an online version. To me this is a watershed moment for Web applications. Office apps are an important litmus test as once you can do Office on the Web (which has been the case with Google Documents for some time but Office has important symbolic meaning) you can do most things that most users care about.
Desktop apps won't die but I definitely think they're going to take more and more of a backseat.
I'd highly suggest you read How Microsoft Lost the API War if you haven't already. One of the things that's particularly amazing about this post is that it was written in 2004.
I honestly believe that with maybe the exception of OSs and browsers, everything will be a web app within the next 10 years. Having said that, let me clarify that by everything I mean everything that a) involves a UI of some kind and b) can be guaranteed secure.
User-interfaced apps will always at some point need a backend, which will at some level require code that is not being interfaced by humans and not being executed via HTTP. I am always reminding myself that things like 'cat' in Unix are actually programs that the OS is calling, not just a function built into the OS. MySQL won't be a web app (as far as I know), but app that powers web apps. We may get to a point where these apps are fully developed via a web interface, written, audited, uploaded and called all via a browser, but at some level its still running behind the scenes.
On that second point, about guaranteed security, I can very easily imagine a large corporation or government office running 95 percent of their daily routines via web apps, but mandating that certain high-security operations be done on a machine directly interfaced with some sort of mainframe, after passing through the cool doors with the retinal scans and what not. Or simply because they can't risk moving certain mission-critical apps over to the web, from fear of it breaking our losing data in the process.
But with those two things aside, I honestly believe everything will be web-based. With the advancement of Web Services and XML in general, it will be possible to not only access and interact with our data, but to plug our custom apps into another app and extend that interaction further and in any environment we want.
It's like that Apple ad "There's an app for that." Except once people get the real picture, it won't be an app written for your iPhone, but a URL. "There's a site for that."
I recommend learning the Lift framework. It's as easy to use as Rails, and it's based on a statically-typed language for the JVM, Scala. From the perspective of your background, Scala should be middling to easy to learn, and you'll be more likely to be comfortable with it than with a dynamic language.
In my opinion, you have a good chance of picking it up quickly, learn a lot about good practices in web development, and even expanding your programming horizons a bit.
I want to go learn web programming,but besides names and a little of html I don't know anything.So I ask you what programming languages you recommend,why,what can be done with it,tools to learn ,etc.I don't know if it matters but I program in a Linux enviroment(Ubuntu).
I don't want to do hardcore web programming ,I only want to be able to develop complete websites and understand network concepts.
Well, most cheap/free web hosts support PHP, MySQL, and most browsers support Javascript.
Target those and you'll be on a reasonably good path.
Some support Ruby and Python, and you might choose that path if you want to learn those languages.
Good luck!
-Adam
Definitely start with HTML, and basic CSS. These are the core of web programming, and you need to understand them well to do anything of consequence.
Once you've got those down, you'll want to move on to a server-side language. The easiest is PHP, but be careful of picking up bad habits, since it's a loose environment; if you stick with PHP, you'll eventually want to use it with an MVC framework such as CodeIgniter, which encourage separating presentation and logic. To get a little more advanced, you can also try Python or Ruby. Get yourself some server space to mess around with; most shared hosting plans are $5-10/month.
For Javascript/AJAX, you'll probably want to start by using Firebug or Firefox's DOM inspector to learn the relationship between the HTML of a page and the DOM object which Javascript uses to interact with it. Once you understand how the DOM works, toy around with jQuery to start doing useful (and fun!) stuff.
You'll also eventually want to learn MySQL (or a similar SQL variant), but that can probably wait, since you can do lots of interesting things without tackling database stuff.
Above all, be patient and persistent, and make use of every resource at your disposal: books, Google, Stack Overflow, and cheat sheets.
Ruby all the way. It's exactly what you need if you're interested in web dev and completely starting from scratch programming-wise. From the basics of Ruby it's pretty easy to get into Rails, which is a very beginner-friendly web framework.
Many great books on Amazon (look for the highest rated of course) on both Ruby and Rails.
Great starting point for links:
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/
As well check out Learn to Program
Now get learnin'.
Google App Engine offers free hosting for applications that do not exceed the specified limits. The server-side language is Python, the client-side language is JavaScript inside Django templates. Everything has worked nicely for me in Ubuntu 8.10.
GREAT Question,
a couple of years ago I was in the same place -
What HONESTLY Helped me was using Dreamweaver, I set it in split mode and started watching the code
I used this and started delving into the PHP Application world and could see what was going on (sort of)
I know you can use dreamweaver with wine on the linux, and it can help you do a TON
granted if you continue it has the potential to limit you to the dreamweaver world... but can help you learn and create at the same time
(I build full php apps from scratch now with a notepad... but I started with DW)
The question I'd have is what kind of scale on web programming are you wanting to do? If it is small stuff then the LAMP stack would be my suggestion while if you want to get more into 3-tier architecture then Java or ASP.Net may be worth getting into for middleware or business logic code.
With the exception of the reference to the LAMP stack above, there has been no Perl recommendations. I like Perl as it is easy enough to build a fairly full featured web application (using CGI, or mod_perl). Of course, you are going to have to learn HTML/CSS if you are going to do anything on the web. I feel Perl is a good choice for web development as it is fairly robust and full featured with all of the modules available on CPAN. Combine with an application framework like CGI::Application or Catalyst and you can build sophisticated web apps in a short amount of time. Also, using a tool like XAMPP can help as you won't have to worry about web server or database cofigurations to get started.
Are there any open source or commercial web programming language that function much like Fog Creek's Wasabi? As in you write your web app in this parent language and it then compiles down to php for Linux hosts and ASP.NET for Windows hosts.
Haxe is the closest I've seen, but it only compiles to PHP (and mod_neko), not to ASP.
Genexus is a commercial development tool that does that. It can generate several other languages. Its oriented toward database apps, it generates database schemas and queries from its internal language.
That said, I have worked with it, and I don't like it. It's quite buggy and its programming language is very archaic.
Before you bother, consider whether it's really worth it.
Supporting one platform with multiple configurations is bad enough; do you really need to support both ASP.NET and PHP? If you're writing an in-house application, then you probably want to stick to as few technologies as possible. If you're writing software to sell, then is it really a problem if your product requires a particular platform?
As far as I know, Fog Creek had to develop Wasabi because there wasn't such a tool. There are a few toolkits trying to be portable, but none that compiled to ASP or PHP that I know of (besides Wasabi, that is).
People act like Joel went mad with Wasabi, but I think it makes perfect sense if you put all the pieces together.
FogBugz was originally written in VB.
Joel hates to throw out working code to start over.
Joel was faced with a server market split between MS and Apache w/PHP servers.
Given the circumstances, it's a rational decision to say, "OK, then, we'll just write a VB to PHP translator."
And once you've taken that step, to say, "Well, since we've essentially have a compiler here, why not extend it with the features we want that Microsoft has never added to VB?"
Thanks to Wasabi, code that would have to be written twice (or more, given some duplicated server/JavaScript code) is written only once.
Multitarget development is pretty common. It's the reality when you can't dictate your target environment.
Pick a real mature application server platform like Java. It runs everywhere...