Ask HN: What programming language/framework should I learn? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What programming language/framework should I learn?

4 pointssixQuarks7 comments

I have over 10 years experience designing sites using HTML and CSS but never learned to program. I keep hearing about phyton, ruby on rails, etc.

I just realized that Ruby on Rails is a framework for Ruby. I thought they were the same thing, which shows you my ignorance.

I plan to create web applications, which language/framework would you suggest I learn and why?

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I spent ten years as a web developer, at first professionally, then as an adjunct to my jobs as a health researcher. I knew some Javascript and PHP, but I programmed in a cargo-cult fashion and never really understood the fundamentals until I started learning Python about 3-4 years ago. Something about Python resonated deeply, and since then I've gone on to learn quite a bit of C, some Haskell, Lua, CoffeeScript, and yes, even finally understanding what using a prototypal language like JavaScript really entails. If you don't have a formal computer science background, I'd highly recommend Python as an excellent route to understanding programming, as opposed to just another programming language. If not Python, then Lua, Ruby, or some other language with good C interop, since with these languages you will almost inevitably end up learning some C, and C is a very nice complement to higher-level dynamic languages.

What's your goal? If it's to get a job, check with companies in your area and learn the stack they are using...unless you want to move.

If it's for the development of your own personal projects, pick whatever you like. If you like developing website, check out each languages' frameworks and see what moves you.

Personally, I code in PHP & Python. Python can say a lot with a little and let's you command line script, with pretty good libraries. PHP is very readable and there is SOOO much code out there, you probably will write very little from scratch. Those are probably the only things relevant to someone just testing the waters.

I've heard RoR is pretty :P Good Luck!

Focus on your application and its high-level design rather than an implementation language or framework. (If you have startup aspirations, attend to the even higher-level goal of identifying what you can build that people would want.) Then find an open-source application that's similar to what you want to build. Check that it has an active supporting community. See what language/framework they use. Get the application to build on your own. Then make a very minor but visible change and rebuild. Repeat with increasingly advanced changes, features of your own, bug fixes, features requested by others, and eventually your major design plans.

You're going to get 10 different answers from 10 different people on this one. They've all got their positives and their drawbacks. My personal background is in PHP, which I've been doing non-professionally for years now, but I've recently made the switch to Ruby on Rails out of curiosity. If you have no programming background at all, then I reccommend doing a ruby on rails tutorial, a php tutorial with a framework like yii or code igniter, and a python tutorial and see which language makes the most sense to you, and then from there go deeper into studying one language or another.

Ruby and Sinatra, it will help you understand the fundamentals. Once you get that down then you can appreciate something like ruby on rails.

I've found the most business value in PHP over the last ~12 years. I still use it for that reason primarily and really like it. Also interested in Python and Ruby, I just haven't had the chance to build production web apps with those yet (not that I've been looking for it).

Check out those 3 first and pick one to start.

If you're thinking ahead, maybe try Dart, it's quite nice.

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