What programming languages are useful for writing web applications?

newbie question

[Red Squirrel]

Hi, I'm pretty new to all this web stuff but I've done a bit of object-oriented programming. I'm looking into developing some simple applications to make a website more interactive and in doing so, learning some new programming languages. I've got some experience of C++ and I've
just started learning a bit of Visual Basic - is this something that I could use a lot or should I be looking at something like Javascript?

Thanks very much for your help! :)

[BlobFisk]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Red_Squirrel!

You're going to need to look at a server side language. There are a number of options available to you:

• Java: JSP/J2EE/Java Beans
  
• ASP/ASP.NET
  
• PHP
  
• CGI/Perl
  

People have differning opinions on the pro's and con's of each!

[claus]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Red_Squirrel :)

The whole thing depends much on what you mean by "applications". This can be anything from a simple time-display on a page to a whole environment like this forum or many times more complicated, either run by the browser or by the server, or both.

You can write web applications using any odd language really: C++, as well as perl, shell, php, asp, .net, python... (just to stay on the server side) well, i've even seen examples in pure DOS, and you can even have web-interfaces to major mainframe apps. Then there's the client languages javascript, Jscript, VBscript (sort-of VB-like), the Flash thing, and the combined server/client/whatever universal thing Java

I've been told that Java (not Javascript) is pretty straightforward when you know some C-flavour, but really, you don't see Java used as much as was promised way back when. I tend to think that it's because there are easier solutions to most problems.

The majority of "dynamic" sites i see use either PHP or ASP on the server side (choice being mainly one of habit, "religion", and scalability). Perl is less structured, or rather, open to many ways of doing things, but it is very powerfull as well and used widely. Combined with javascript on the client, you can get pretty far with this.

However, if you think of applications that are running in the browser (as opposed to on the server), Java or perhaps Flash may be worthwhile (or indeed VB for MS-compatible environments). C-type stuff (here: including Java) is, imho, overkill for most purposes, but necessary for some.

Javascript, i have to add, is very useful, it's the swiss army knife of browsers.

/claus

[John_Caius]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld! [webmasterworld.com] ;)

[Wild_Cujo]

Don't forget Cold fusion as a server side language thank you very much :P Its faster to implement than the rest but if you know some Visual Basic ASP might be easy enough to pickup.

There is also something called blue dragon (I think that’s the name) that will run CFML code and is a cheaper server.

Add-on: Also...now with flash remoting flash is no longer only client side you can use action script,flash remoting, and other fun stuff to interact with your servers. Good examples at macromedia's website.

[garann]

You might base your decision on where you plan to host your site. If you're hosting it yourself, Apache is a darn good choice for the money, and gives you the choice of Perl, PHP, Java, and lots of other languages (if you install the right modules). If you're hosting elsewhere, you'll probably have the easiest time finding a service that uses PHP or ASP. (And I'd reckon that's why you see a lot of sites that use those languages).

However, if you already understand OOP, you can get a lot of benefit in terms of reusability and scalability from Java or .NET. Rather than going back to previous web applications to copy-and-paste the code you used last time, you just build yourself a nicely abstracted library of classes to perform various functions for you. It's not such a big deal for one webapp, but the more webapps you write, the more you appreciate it.

g.