What Path should I follow

[FutureWebDeveloper]

Hello Everyone. My name is Joseph Bourne and I' am a business and computer science major. My goal in life is to start and open my own restaurant and start my own internet company also. So far all I know is HTML, HTML5, CSS, CSS3, and some JavaScript. I plan to practice more on my CSS and HTML with JavaScript and also some JQuery for this whole year so I can improve dramatically. Then next year I plan to get into JSP. I was wondering if any of you good programmers out could reccommend any other languages I should study. Websites I' am interested in making are sites for restaurants, B2B, B2C, Video social networking sites like stickam or tinychat; and hopefully one day I'll want to make desktop applications for my websites. Thank you!

[callumacrae]

Just start making websites. If you find something you can't do, learn it. I would suggest learning PHP instead of JSP, as more people use it and it is easier to learn. You could also try looking at a few job descriptions to see what they expect you to know.

[FutureWebDeveloper]

I've made about 3 websites, each 1 gets better than the last, but I still need to practice more. I want to learn JSP instead of PHP because I've heard jsp code is much cleaner than PHP, plus learning JSP at my college means I have to take the Java Course first, which I want to do because Java is used for almost anything nowadays (which I see more valuable than learning PHP). Also, I've been on programmerhaven.com to look at job descriptions and requirements. Thanks for the advice though. I got tons and tons of training to do in order to become a bad ###### web developer/software developer.

[boen_robot]

I want to learn JSP instead of PHP because I've heard jsp code is much cleaner than PHP

Just FYI... this is pretty much not true.PHP, as a language, especially its later versions, allow you to write code that is as elegant, if not more elegant, than a Java equivalent.The "problem" with PHP that still exists is that it also allows you (and inherently => other developers that you may or may not end up working with) to write messier code than what Java would let you get away with.With good discipline and coding standards in place before a project starts, your PHP code can be protected from this.

[callumacrae]

The "problem" with PHP that still exists is that it also allows you (and inherently => other developers that you may or may not end up working with) to write messier code than what Java would let you get away with. With good discipline and coding standards in place before a project starts, your PHP code can be protected from this.

I like describing it like this: Bad PHP developers are worse than bad JSP developers, and the language allows it.

[FutureWebDeveloper]

Just FYI... this is pretty much not true. PHP, as a language, especially its later versions, allow you to write code that is as elegant, if not more elegant, than a Java equivalent. The "problem" with PHP that still exists is that it also allows you (and inherently => other developers that you may or may not end up working with) to write messier code than what Java would let you get away with. With good discipline and coding standards in place before a project starts, your PHP code can be protected from this.

Maybe I should give PHP another look. Well I guess I'll try out PHP then. Thanks for the advice.

[birbal]

One part of PHP tend to make messier code than java counter part, is lack of function overloading. As PHP is loosly typed language so that it has not any method signature so overloading a function is not possible technically. (PHP has method overloading but it is conceptualy far away than c++/java overloading). Still you can make a function act in multiple way like checking the parameters and act upon it. but as the polymorphic feature of a function grows its become tedious to maintain. though it is possible to encapsulate the behaviour in seperate methods and call the methods depends on parameter condition. But it looses its polymorphic features (one name different behaviour). you need to modify the calling function as well as encapsulated function. Where as in java you can use same name of method with different signature to do different behaviour. all of the overloaded method then have one particular task at a time with same name. If you need to have do different task for same signature, probably there is something wrong and it needs a new method to handle the task. It is something unavoidable in php. Convenience comes at cost for loosly typed language.

Edited February 16, 2013 by birbal