Advice Sought for Web Programming

[AFTT47]

As long as you understand that javascript is (a) not Java; and (b) absolutely necessary to any and all internet programming, you're fine.

Yeah, I got it. I see now (much to my relief) that it has a strict mode. A lot more capability than I initially thought too.

I'm about 75% through the tutorials on the W3schools site. Those are quite adequate. You were right - no need to pay for books!

[Aoi Magi]

Learn Javascript. It's free, runs almost anywhere, has very modern architecture and frameworks available to it, and is quite future-proof. You don't really need anything else with javascript for web-programming (well a bit of html and css are always necessary).

I am a PHP developer by profession, and I like it mainly cause it is really very flexible and let's me work the way I want to for each task. The frameworks available for it are superb too.

If you are trying to move away from windows, I would suggest moving to Ubuntu, and later to fedora. They will make your life as a developer a lot easier.

[KevinM1]

Whoa, ASP.NET web forms is most definitely not the way to go if you're going to use the MS web stack.  Go with ASP.NET MVC instead.  Why?  Several reasons:

1. MVC is essentially the pattern for modern web apps.  That means the skills learned with it are general enough to be applicable with other languages/frameworks.  Indeed, ASP.NET MVC steals liberally from Ruby on Rails, like most other modern MVC frameworks.

2. Web forms are an archaic answer to the problem.  Web forms demand that every page have a 'code behind' file, which invariably mixes up display logic and business logic, which is a Very Bad Thing™.  MVC is a hell of a lot easier to debug, maintain, edit, etc.

3. Web forms has its own, proprietary lifetime process that, well, sucks.  It's a confusing chain of events that fire every time a page is loaded and rendered.  It's not very web-like in that you can't just get a request, handle it, and spit results back to the screen.  You need to figure out what load/render event to hook into.

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For web technologies, it's important to keep in mind the distinction between server side and client side.  JavaScript is (largely) client side, meaning it runs in the browser after the page has been rendered.  Everything else (ASP.NET MVC, PHP, Python, Ruby) runs on the server.  So, the typical request/response pattern is:

Client -- request --> Server (handles request with whatever language is there) -- response --> Client (JavaScript does its stuff)

So, looking at it as a choice between JavaScript or something on the server is flawed, IMO.  Your best bet is to pick a server side language and JavaScript.

So, with all that said, here's the modern language/framework options you have for server side (excluding Java proper, as I don't have experience with it):

C# (not VB, because VB is ugly shit): ASP.NET MVC
PHP: either Symfony 2, Laravel, or Zend Framework... others are crap
Python: Django
Ruby: Rails

w3schools is okay for starting out.  They're a lot better than they used to be (see: http://www.w3fools.com).

If you pick PHP, hit me up in PMs.  I can point you in the right direction for doing it for reals.

[bennyboy]

The attraction of Web Forms is the similarity to Windows Forms programming. What you said about event handling is true, though. Once you understand the page life cycle (and the goofy order that individual controls cascade through events at different stages), things get a lot easier. Until then, you get stupid stuff like buttons that need to be clicked twice, or dynamically-added controls that disappear on postback, or conflict between your AJAX controls, etc.

My experience with Web Forms is this: it's VERY easy to design and reuse custom controls, and it's very easy to visually design a page quickly. MVC is going to be nice as you get into a heavy project and find things nice and organized (by force), but I think Web Forms with good programming practices is still very powerful. Once you've designed your uber controls, drag 'n' drop feels so goood.