Path to Become a Good Web Developer With Resources.

[challapradyumna]

In order to become a good web developer (Not designer) , Here is a list of languages to learn.

1. HTML(Hyper Text MarkUp Language) - This is the basis for any website . But it can't do many things . Mainly used for links, lists, tables(rarely used now a days),Text manipulation and some more basic tasks nothing dynamic.

2. CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) - This is developed to easily edit the structure of the site and maintain uniformity in all the sites pages. This has evolved quite a lot form its first version and can do things like , Drop Down menus,Rollovers, text manipulation , site background and many other things which are complex than what HTML can do. This is a very important basic to write visually good sites.

3. (Optional) Javascript :- This is quite different form Sun Microsystems JAVA and has no resemblance to it and quite simple compared to it. With javascript complex animations like slides , fades and a few more can be done. But its all fancy stuff and there are many opensource projects that we can just pop them into any project and use . So Not a real necessity but it helps. This can be extended by leaning the most popular jQuery & AJAX also.

From here onwards there are many options JSP(Java Server Pages),Perl ,Python,Ruby,PHP,Oracle DB,MySql,.NET........ i am going with the most popular thing.
4. PHP ( Personal Home Page(Peviously) , Hypertext PreProcessor (Now) )- Most popular web programming lanugage supported by 100% Web hosts. Can do LOTS and LOTS of stuff , it contains almost all the features of a programming language .variables , arrays, functions,loops, If else statements . It can also do Read ,write Operations & Lots more stuff on a dedicated server.

5. MySQL(Structured Query Language) is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems (RDBMS). PHP seamlessly integrates into MySQL.

->So how does all these work together?

First we write a Query in SQL to retrieve some data from the database . Then PHP is used to loop through that data and output it as plain text. Then the obtained data is displayed using a mixture of HTML,CSS & Javascript in a user friendly way.

->What can you do with the above knowledge?

Well if you have learned All the concepts of all the languages you can do anything but for starters You can just code a simple site that uses database.

->What Next?

Now comes the Frameworks that give a base to code a strong site . They remove the need of reinventing the wheel everything and more time for accomplishing the task. Ex:- Codeigniter,Kohana etc....

Frameworks Clearly divide the project into 3 Parts - Model , View , Controller. This is called MVC .
Model contains all the database interactions.
View consists of all the visual coding HTML,CSS,Javascript....
Controller connects both model and view and outputs the file to the user.

This enables us to use the same model of different views and the vice versa. Apart from this carrying variables from page to page becomes easier. No need of coding the database name,password for every page. Routing the URL's can be done. There are many helpers that can do a variety of tasks easier like form validation , file uploading, captcha and much more. Mainly it reduces the load of testing each and every link on the site. The site becomes consistent .

->Will add links to good resources to learn soon.Will try to write some more on frameworks afterwards. W3Schools is a good start for anything .......

 

[avi]

PHP is been around 10+ years I guess. Has it time arrived to die ? If yes, what would be next ? Ruby on rails?

 

[challapradyumna]

^^ I don't think so they are updating it regularly with new programming features. But ruby on rails is also a good option to learn instead of PHP but it all comes to personal preference in the end.

 

[avi]

I meant to say that PHP is becoming old now. Is it time for it to die ?

It was Pearl before PHP. Pearl got killed around 04 entirely. In around 1999 PHP was lot faster compared to Pearl. It had far more libraries & drivers support.

now who will replace PHP ?

but PHP forums support is unbeatable.

PS - this should be in guides/articles section. Do include book names. And also give more info regarding frameworks. It'd be killer article

 

[challapradyumna]

The userbase of internet has increase exponentially also the developers for web technologies , Lets not forget the support of PHP by all the Hosting providers. Many of the most popular sites we use are written using PHP . I dont think people can move on form PHP. Also the development of frameworks using PHP & MySQL. We cant leave Wordpress behind it is powering thousands of sites , galleria based on Kohana, similarly many frameworks........

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

Didnt know such a section existed :ashamed: . Currently learning Codeigniter but will try to write something .

 

[lll_aritra_lll]

Very compact one, and I am preparing for the road.. i tried learnign through w3school, but learning while working is much better, though it confined between the limit of need, But I created a intranet site for my grad project in 2 months from zero.. I am starting to learn PHP again from tomorrow

 

[challapradyumna]

Try phpacademy - Free PHP video tutorials or TheNewBoston - Free Educational Video Tutorials on Computer Programming, Adobe Software, Computer Science and More!

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

@mods please move this thread to the appropriate section.