Ask HN: Recommendation for a .net dev: Python, Ruby, or PHP

1 point·brianhama··4 comments

From a language standpoint Ruby and Python are certainly more interesting languages than PHP. Most .Net devs I talk to find php a bit kludgey. I recommend installing a virtual Ubuntu machine on your windows machine and playing with Python for a few days. I found "Dive into Python" to be a great resource for learning http://www.diveintopython.net/.

From there, if web is what you are interested in, take a look at django. The django book and official django tutorial are both great places to start. Happy hacking!

I'd recommend Python and Django too. I've been developing JEE applications for 8 years now and recently started a project (www.freedomsponsors.org) with Django. Django makes things so simpler and faster to code. I'm in love with it!

If you take that on, I'd also invite you to do a little collaboration on it - FS is free on Github (github.com/freedomsponsors). It might give you a feeling of what's it like. And I could definitely use some help :)

I've been working with .NET for 10 years. I've also developed smaller projects with Java, PHP, Ruby and Python, among other languages. I would recommend you take a good look at Python. Read the Zen of Python[1]. If it makes sense to you, try it.

[1] http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/

Why not try all three over a few weeks? It doesn't take long to get them installed in order to play around.

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