Quote:
Originally Posted by Erock  I only want to make websites, and it seems like a lot of quality sites are made with php so I'm wondering if you could elaborate on why you'd recommend Python or Ruby for web development. |
For what it's worth ... in my view PHP is more intuitive if you already know HTML and web page construction or want to learn it along with that, because you just mix PHP code right into the HTML. However I entered the world of web development in the late 90's through VBScript, which worked similarly to PHP, and I found that there are limits to how complicated a site you want to make that way. I prefer the separation of presentation (HTML) and server-side code, which is easier to do (and encouraged) in VB.NET, C#, and other languages that run under .NET (Ruby and Python included) ... and by many other platforms and languages.
On the other hand, there is a blog post (sorry, I've lost the link) from a guy who was fed up with PHP and wanted to rewrite his whole successful web site in Ruby, and after 2 years of failing, went back to PHP. Because he totally "gets" PHP and just found Ruby unintuitive. He still rewrote everything but just in good ol' PHP. So there's something to be said with using what flows best for you. Also, don't blame a bad design on the language it was implemented in!
--Bob