The hard facts: what languages web developers should learn

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

When I first started learning programming, choices were limited to machine code or a version of BASIC. But then I am ancient.

In many ways, the newcomer to programming who’s aiming at web or mobile development has a much better time of it today. This is because whilst there are many, many languages to choose from, they have much more in common than languages of the past. Learn ActionScript, for example, and you’re half way there with C#, PHP and JavaScript, as their basic constructs are identical.

But the real value you, as a web developer, can bring to a project is specialist skill. Whilst every good PHP developer understands the basics of C#, no web project can be completed without in-depth knowledge, and this takes time and lots and lots of practice to develop. It’s a huge investment so the choice of which language to specialise in is also critical, at least in the short- to medium-term. (more…)

phpDesigner 2008

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

It seems that my endless search for the ideal PHP IDE has finally…er…ended. phpDesigner 2008 is the most promising environment I’ve seen and even though I’ve only just started using it, it’s already seen Zend Studio Pro and the treacle-like Zend Studio Eclipse confined to the recycle bin.

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When to use Stored Procedures

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Version 5 of MySQL added Stored Procedures and, as is often the case when you’ve been using earlier versions, I didn’t notice at all, until a client asked whether the site I’m building for him should be using this technique for interacting with a database. In this case, the answer is a resounding no since it would add an unnecessary level of complexity to a site in which the MySQL queries rarely involve more than one table at a time.

So, when should they be used?

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