Posted by Colin McKinnon on 02/19/06 01:28

Jacob.Lyles@gmail.com wrote:

> Six months ago I did not know what a server was. Since then I've
> educated myself about the workings of the internet.
<snip>
> I'm actually fairly good at SQL.

Well done Jacob.

But if you ask for advise on a PHP newsgroup isn't the answer a foregone
conclusion?

> On a lot of hacker sites I see the relative merits of languages such as
> Python, Perl, Ruby, and Lisp discussed. However they never discuss
> scripting languages such as PHP, ASP, and Cold Fusion in comparison to
> these.

I think the term 'scripting language' is rather deprecated by the developers
of most active projects - it's a rather misleading moniker. Perl was
originally written to be a scripting language (when scripting was in
vogue).

Certainly some langauges allow you to do more than others, but typically its
a trade-off in terms of complexity and verbosity against functionality; I
wouldn't want to write a device driver in PHP, but nor would I write a web
application in C.

The great language shoot out might be of help.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/ While the number of lines in a program
is some indicator of the amount of effort required - I'd suggest looking at
some of the source code and seeing how much of it you think makes semse to
you.

> Does PHP fit my needs? Is there another language that would allow me to
> program faster?

I think not - but that's just another opinion, and one based on little
evidence (I'd like to think I know what I'm talking about, but that's only
one side of this conversation).

> Am I limiting myself by
(only)
> learning PHP?
>

I would say yes. But you've already said you're learning SQL and javascript
too. That gives you access to procedural even semi-functional,
object-oriented and non-procedural languages. Use them.

C.

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