Becoming a great web developer!

1

hi!

i am actually a musician, not a web designer, but i am interested in it and have taught myself some basic flash and html stuff to make my site: www.beyondsound.co.uk
i think ive learnt a lot and im quite happy with how the site worked out (although its still not quite done yet!)

but now, again, i am restricted by my capabilities. i have seen the incredible possibilities php and java open up to the web developer and there is so much i want to learn and be able to do.

my question is a simple one: what is the best thing for me try and learn first?

my first thought was java, but then i thought - is it really still as usefull as it used to be? mabe php is the way to go… obviously, i need to have a basic understanding of all of them, but i have to start somewhere… as far as actionscript goes, i think i know enough to get by for what i want to do at the moment.

well, anything you have to say would be great! also, any thoughts on my current web site?

thanks very much :slight_smile:
-Harry

2

I’d definitely say PHP. Java is more for web applications than for websites. PHP though is more comparable to PERL. It’s a server side language. I definitely use PHP more than I would ever be able to use Java, plus it is easy to learn.

3

Actually, Perl is a full language as well, just like Java… it just happens to be used a lot for CGI. I use PHP mainly for web development, although I dislike it because I mainly use Python (which totally kicks PHP’s *** in terms of ease-of-use and consistency).

I’d learn standards-based development next - see http://alistapart.com - and PHP, purely because it’s supported basically everywhere. Java is much more enterprise level really :slight_smile:

4

Sorry, Python was what I was thinking of not PERL :wink:

5

thanks!

looks like php is the way to go then!

-Harry