Funktastic Programming Adventures in Web Development

When learning web scripting languages, it is difficult to know which route to take. There are lots of different choices each having their own advantages and disadvantages. Each of these needs to be weighed carefully before making a choice. To make matters more difficult, there are both client-side scripting languages and server-side scripting languages. In this case, we will only be discussing server-side scripting languages.

One of the first questions you must ask yourself is: “Do you wish to make money or a career out of scripting?” If your answer is yes, then you should definitely look at Microsoft ASP.Net or Java Server Pages. Many employers today are looking for people who are well-versed in ASP.Net. The problem is, ASP.Net is really an object-oriented programming language masquerading as a scripting lanaguage and involves a good proficiency at programming.

If you are more interested in just making it a hobby, then a good route to go would be PHP or Cold Fusion. PHP is available for both Unix and Windows platforms and can be run under Internet Information Services (the Windows web server) or Apache (on both platforms.) PHP is incredibly powerful and borrows a lot of syntax from Perl (another scripting language). It is relatively easy to learn but not as easy as Active Server Pages.

If you want to build a web site of your own and have it hosted, you should use a Unix scripting language because Unix is far cheaper and more reliable especially in a shared environment. I have recently begun a transition of my older ASP (windows) scripting into PHP for just this reason. PHP is well-supported and well-documented and code samples abould all over the Internet. Whatever your choice, be sure to weight the options!