Dipping Toes Into Programming
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I actually find it faster to build the interface in straight HTML, CSS, & Javascript and then let PHP or whatever handle the data transports and such.
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I've been digging through WordPress a little bit in the evenings to see how it's really set up, starting with index.php and following it.
It's freakin huge with so many moving parts and gears, I can see why there's so many devs lol.
But it's very interesting to see how it works at that level, and helps to learn a little too.
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@tim_g said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
I've been digging through WordPress a little bit in the evenings to see how it's really set up, starting with index.php and following it.
It's freakin huge with so many moving parts and gears, I can see why there's so many devs lol.
But it's very interesting to see how it works at that level, and helps to learn a little too.
That will actually help if you ever find yourself having to clean up a hacked Wordpress site.
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I came across this link:
Usage of server-side programming languages for websites
https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language/all
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PHP definitely rules the roost by number of deployments. Just keep it in perspective that that is mostly WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and similar, simple frameworks that are widely deployed. And lots of free apps like vTiger, SugarCRM, SuiteCRM, you name it were always PHP apps. And most web hosts only offer PHP. So PHP does insane numbers of simple "personal websites". That's its name, Personal Home Page.
Then things like Erlang or Java might have small numbers of deployments, but they tend to be things like big financial transaction systems or whatever. Things that aren't deployed very often, but are really significant on a "per deployment" model.
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That .5% Ruby is not insignificant and shows the growing popularity of Ruby on Rails.
Python is a great language to learn because there are so many different areas it is used. But Ruby on Rails is much more common for building kickass web apps. Ruby is also used for many things (Chef and Puppet if we're thinking about CMs) but I think Python is still better for variety.
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@flaxking I agree, when making web apps, RoR is way ahead of Python and its framework options.
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@scottalanmiller said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
PHP definitely rules the roost by number of deployments. Just keep it in perspective that that is mostly WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and similar, simple frameworks that are widely deployed. And lots of free apps like vTiger, SugarCRM, SuiteCRM, you name it were always PHP apps. And most web hosts only offer PHP. So PHP does insane numbers of simple "personal websites". That's its name, Personal Home Page.
Then things like Erlang or Java might have small numbers of deployments, but they tend to be things like big financial transaction systems or whatever. Things that aren't deployed very often, but are really significant on a "per deployment" model.
Ya charts like that always mislead. Like the static files section. The site may be static files, but it's ignoring all of the platforms used to build them (like Hugo). Builtwith probably has the best metrics I've found. https://trends.builtwith.com/ This is their weekly trends section, but you can search by pretty much anything.
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@stacksofplates said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
@scottalanmiller said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
PHP definitely rules the roost by number of deployments. Just keep it in perspective that that is mostly WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and similar, simple frameworks that are widely deployed. And lots of free apps like vTiger, SugarCRM, SuiteCRM, you name it were always PHP apps. And most web hosts only offer PHP. So PHP does insane numbers of simple "personal websites". That's its name, Personal Home Page.
Then things like Erlang or Java might have small numbers of deployments, but they tend to be things like big financial transaction systems or whatever. Things that aren't deployed very often, but are really significant on a "per deployment" model.
Ya charts like that always mislead. Like the static files section. The site may be static files, but it's ignoring all of the platforms used to build them (like Hugo). Builtwith probably has the best metrics I've found. https://trends.builtwith.com/ This is their weekly trends section, but you can search by pretty much anything.
And even static sites can be dynamically generated.
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@scottalanmiller said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
@stacksofplates said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
@scottalanmiller said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
PHP definitely rules the roost by number of deployments. Just keep it in perspective that that is mostly WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and similar, simple frameworks that are widely deployed. And lots of free apps like vTiger, SugarCRM, SuiteCRM, you name it were always PHP apps. And most web hosts only offer PHP. So PHP does insane numbers of simple "personal websites". That's its name, Personal Home Page.
Then things like Erlang or Java might have small numbers of deployments, but they tend to be things like big financial transaction systems or whatever. Things that aren't deployed very often, but are really significant on a "per deployment" model.
Ya charts like that always mislead. Like the static files section. The site may be static files, but it's ignoring all of the platforms used to build them (like Hugo). Builtwith probably has the best metrics I've found. https://trends.builtwith.com/ This is their weekly trends section, but you can search by pretty much anything.
And even static sites can be dynamically generated.
Ya that's what I was referring to. Hugo (written in Go) does that along with many others (like Jekyll).
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@scottalanmiller said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
Then things like Erlang or Java might have small numbers of deployments, but they tend to be things like big financial transaction systems or whatever. Things that aren't deployed very often, but are really significant on a "per deployment" model.
Yeah, I don't ever plan on doing anything with those in regards to programming.
I'm going to stick to what I can see myself using or what will be the most useful to me.
It's a short list:
- PHP
- This will teach me how to program, the concepts, etc... Basically, my gateway language.
- will also be useful on the side for personal use, and some professional use
- Python
- This is the big one that will be the most useful professionally, to my career, plus some personal use.
- JavaScript
- This goes hand in hand with the web development side of things.
Basically, Python is the main one I want to learn, but I am starting with PHP because it's much easier than Python to use as a gateway programming language. I can get further faster with learning how to program with PHP than with Python. But I also want to learn PHP anyways, which will immediately be useful for a bunch of things personally and professionally... so I see it as a win anyways, followed by Python. Then JavaScript, because that can do great things in the browser as well as on the server. It works well with the others and shouldn't be passed by in this day and age.
Although others in those lists like Go and RoR (others too, just picking on those) are probably "better" languages in some important areas, I just won't really use them with anything I have... so I don't see a point. Nothing I currently have uses those, and nothing I plan on doing uses those either. If I could find uses for them, I'd just rather use Python anyways.
- PHP
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BTW, Is it true it was named after Monty Python?
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@tim_g said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
BTW, Is it true it was named after Monty Python?
It is, indeed, true.
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@tim_g said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
@scottalanmiller said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
Then things like Erlang or Java might have small numbers of deployments, but they tend to be things like big financial transaction systems or whatever. Things that aren't deployed very often, but are really significant on a "per deployment" model.
Yeah, I don't ever plan on doing anything with those in regards to programming.
I'm going to stick to what I can see myself using or what will be the most useful to me.
It's a short list:
- PHP
- This will teach me how to program, the concepts, etc... Basically, my gateway language.
- will also be useful on the side for personal use, and some professional use
- Python
- This is the big one that will be the most useful professionally, to my career, plus some personal use.
- JavaScript
- This goes hand in hand with the web development side of things.
Basically, Python is the main one I want to learn, but I am starting with PHP because it's much easier than Python to use as a gateway programming language. I can get further faster with learning how to program with PHP than with Python. But I also want to learn PHP anyways, which will immediately be useful for a bunch of things personally and professionally... so I see it as a win anyways, followed by Python. Then JavaScript, because that can do great things in the browser as well as on the server. It works well with the others and shouldn't be passed by in this day and age.
Although others in those lists like Go and RoR (others too, just picking on those) are probably "better" languages in some important areas, I just won't really use them with anything I have... so I don't see a point. Nothing I currently have uses those, and nothing I plan on doing uses those either. If I could find uses for them, I'd just rather use Python anyways.
Just in case it’s not clear.... RoR is actually Ruby as the language and Rails as the framework (like Django). They are so often used together that it’s often thought that they are one thing.
- PHP
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I was playing around with the concept of using PHP and forms to do things with PowerShell (given a Windows Server is running a web server with PHP such as XAMPP).
Lots of potential there.
I can get form data processed by powershell and outputted to a web page.
I didn't do much last night, but I was able to output PING results to the web page, and when I was finished for the night, I put in code so when I refreshed the web page, it shut down my computer.
I'm thinking I could potentially create an internal web app to control anything via PowerShell by use of forms... such as adding a user to AD to running reports. (of course secured and login required)
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@tim_g said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
I was playing around with the concept of using PHP and forms to do things with PowerShell (given a Windows Server is running a web server with PHP such as XAMPP).
Lots of potential there.
I can get form data processed by powershell and outputted to a web page.
I didn't do much last night, but I was able to output PING results to the web page, and when I was finished for the night, I put in code so when I refreshed the web page, it shut down my computer.
I'm thinking I could potentially create an internal web app to control anything via PowerShell by use of forms... such as adding a user to AD to running reports. (of course secured and login required)
So basically recreating Honolulu?
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@scottalanmiller said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
@tim_g said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
I was playing around with the concept of using PHP and forms to do things with PowerShell (given a Windows Server is running a web server with PHP such as XAMPP).
Lots of potential there.
I can get form data processed by powershell and outputted to a web page.
I didn't do much last night, but I was able to output PING results to the web page, and when I was finished for the night, I put in code so when I refreshed the web page, it shut down my computer.
I'm thinking I could potentially create an internal web app to control anything via PowerShell by use of forms... such as adding a user to AD to running reports. (of course secured and login required)
So basically recreating Honolulu?
If that's how it work, I haven't looked... then yes.
Except this would be a learning tool for me as I'm going through my PHP book, where I implement things as I learn them.
That's what I'm doing now with this other PHP web application. -
@tim_g said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
@scottalanmiller said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
@tim_g said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
I was playing around with the concept of using PHP and forms to do things with PowerShell (given a Windows Server is running a web server with PHP such as XAMPP).
Lots of potential there.
I can get form data processed by powershell and outputted to a web page.
I didn't do much last night, but I was able to output PING results to the web page, and when I was finished for the night, I put in code so when I refreshed the web page, it shut down my computer.
I'm thinking I could potentially create an internal web app to control anything via PowerShell by use of forms... such as adding a user to AD to running reports. (of course secured and login required)
So basically recreating Honolulu?
If that's how it work, I haven't looked... then yes.
Except this would be a learning tool for me as I'm going through my PHP book, where I implement things as I learn them.
That's what I'm doing now with this other PHP web application.Applying what you're learning to something you already know - it's a good learning strategy
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I am not sure I would recommend PHP as a first language; perhaps PHP 7 leveraging Laravel or something structured. Mainstream PHP programmers used to have many bad habits. PHP 7 has good object support and I do not dislike it that much.
Python is very good for a first language.
I am more of a backend programmer and for that I like Go; it is a small language with very good concurrency.
For front end I like https://vuejs.org/ more than ReactBy the way, the python paradox is a good read: http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
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@dave_c said in Dipping Toes Into Programming:
Mainstream PHP programmers used to have many bad habits.
That won't affect the learner, though. Learn from a good source, and PHP won't be in the way at all. PHP itself doesn't encourage bad habits, that was just a culture of people using it as non-programmers.
