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My son has been told that in order to learn how to develop with asp on his desktop computer that he has to upgrade from XP home to XP Pro in order to see if his scripts run properly. Correct? Or do most people buy hosting space and just load up their scripts incessantly to test them?
Thanks for any input.
The alternative of using hosting space is definitely fine, as long as you want to spend the $10/month on it. If he seriously wants to learn it, the price will turn out to be minimal.
Why learn asp? I would recommend learning asp.net (the successor of asp)
I sometimes have a problem with that suggestion. You absolutely should not just "jump in" and try to learn .NET programming. At the least you need to learn up on Object Oriented Programming and the principles you need to apply, as well reading up on the .NET Framework itself.
For someone who has no programming experience (my assumption based on the tone of the original post), I would absolutely start out with ASP/VBScript just to get into the programming mindset before you go out and try to mess with an advanced environment like .NET offers. Just my 2 cents.
Yes, it is always good to start with a scripting language like ASP, Perl, Ruby or PHP for that matter as it is more forgiving. I started with Perl actually.
I now wanted to write that you should at some point jump over to a more "grown up" framework like .Net, but that statement is actually not true, yes, cool things can be done with asp.net, but I cannot think of stuff that cannot be done in the forementioned script languages. Asp.Net has some advantages, but some things can be developed way faster in for example perl, so in the end it might not matter and depend fully on personal preference.
Thank you mattglet for pointing this out...
I'd suggest the scripting start off as well. .net is a lot to consume for beginners.
However I'm firmly of the belief that ASP/VBScript is a really bad Platform to start off on. It's too easy to pick up bad habits that can be hard to reverse. Even the documentation is full of bad code conventions. ASP.Net/VB.Net is a much better choice for the beginner.
Using hosting space only will slow down learning.
ASP or PHP are ideal for learning and focussing on programming fundamentals. Learning .NET or Java is a commercial decision to make after learning the basics.
It's too easy to pick up bad habits that can be hard to reverse
It's too easy to pick up bad habits that can be hard to reverseCan you give an example?
Here's an example :p
function getPageNumber( sPage)getPageNumber = mid (sPage, 5, len(sPage)-8 )end function
But I dont follow, so lets compare it with the equivalent.net solution, may as well write it c# while you at it, and lets make sure it ports to any platform , including forward & backward compatibility, and scales for any related requirements.
The worse bad habit is not delivering solutions on time becasue youre being paid to read books to do things in a difeerent, new or cooler way when a perfectly workable solution already exists.
