Ask HN: another newb question

1 pointdschmidt112 comments

I started watching an intro on node with Ryan Dahl, he sarcastically says "windows is important, like php" followed up by laughter in the audience.

i'm starting to learn php for what i want developed. even though node is newer, is it a good/safe alternative for beginners?

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My bias: I use PHP all day at work, but I'm also a front end engineer so I do a ton of JS. I do not do any node though.

PHP is a great all around tool, and node is good at one specific thing (basically request routing: node is quick if you are able to route the requests out to asynchronous servers). For most things PHP is going to help you more than node, so I would start there.

Short answer: Learn them both. Start with node.js.

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