Learning a programming Language

[charlie]

I would have done a poll and ask who uses what. I'm sure 80% would be wordpress and php.

dont get fooled into thinking you need to be a programmer - get the basics with a CMS system if your not interested in learning the ins and outs of collections, functions, stored procedures etc

PHP programmers, hosting, open source projects and PHP resources are much more wide spread and about half the price of anything dot net based. if your project ever takes off on a similar scale to facebook then you may need to rewrite but at that point you should have enough in the bank to do so.

test: find a decent open source or cheap forum for ASP.NET

[ukdomains]

Originally Posted by stender

Thanks all, I'd like to say your posts have made my decision easier but....

There are a lot of jobs advertised, doing what I do but for circa £10k more if I knew perl.

I have another job offer where I am now but would learn asp.net and maybe some c# but will be doing a lot with stored procedures. My salary won't necessarily change with that one initially, hence where I'm wondering is it better prospects? My hours will change with this job too which is a negative.

I can't say I'll enjoy coding in anything tbh (would love to get out of IT altogether if my sites covered my salary! wouldnt we all).

Lol we all want to escape our day jobs , i wish i could one day

[disruptive]

Here are some things to think about:

1. What is the most defendable skill? I.e. what has the greatest barrier for other people, but lowest barrier for you? Think about the potential problems of out sourcing.
2. Can you add value to the development process at all? I could be more on design (I mean architecturally).
3. You might want to consider other platforms such as SAP etc etc that *did*, but *might* command good prospects now.
4. Project management? This usually help up the payscale!

On the coding side, not sure if people have mentioned Python.

I think its pretty cool and as a long term programmer/developer/what da ya call it, I can recommend its fun aspects. Also there is ruby - now both are scripts, but you can do a lot, like develop web projects and all kinds of things. I have some pretty groovy things done in Python - it basically makes "me tea".

[aZooZa]

Python's also cool. You can also carry it around and work with it on your smartphone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_for_S60

[julian]

in my life as a web type i've just used whatever is necessary to get a result to make money online. Don't get making dosh online confused with needing to know c++ to have a career as a coder.

I started with ASP and Access then did the .NET/SQL thing, bored with that and found it OTT for basic websites now binned it all and use wordpress/mysql.

I think there will be growing market for shithot front end coders. If I had my time again i'd learn php+mysql becaus eof its robust and agile and cheap! Also, learn CSS and javascript hardcore.

All these thigns are just a means to an end to me now, although I always like to do a bit of coding now and again - kind of a nerdy thing you never lose I guess..

[apd]

I can code in most languages but for me it's Perl every time, I've used it non-stop for the last 15 years and it can pretty much do anything you throw at it. Virtually 100% of the work I get now is Perl and MySQL.

However, if I was starting from scratch and all I needed was a few basic websites then I would choose PHP.