What web development platforms should I be learning?

Well, my idea for the past couple of years was to learn a language, and get a site started. I have a really good idea that is based on ideas from sites like digg.com, and wikipedia.com (not copying at all of course, a very original idea).





I have been learning PHP and MySQL for the past year, and now in a recent Yahoo Question, I have come to find out that most big company websites do not use this language. I feel really stupid now.





I was told I should be learning ruby, perl, ruby on rails, but the most popular one is asp.net





My question (with the thought of me starting my own popular website in the near future), is which language should I persue, and if so are there any really popular programs that are almost WSYIWYG editors or something close. Btw does asp.net cost money? May sound like a dumb question but this is the first time me hearing about asp.net (not asp though).





Also, to give you some specs, I want it to be Web 2.0 (completely user driven), fresh, and looks nice, dynamic

What web development platforms should I be learning?
I don't think you should get too hung up on the specific technology right now. If you are comfortable writing php and mysql, then go for it! If you have a great idea, prototype it and deliver it as a beta. You will learn by doing. Until you know what the key constraints are in your specific problem, it is unlikely that you will pick the perfect solution. A lot of this probably depends on how your app will be used and how it will evolve which at the beginning is hard to predict. So if you feel you have the tools to deliver something useful, do it. If you picked the ideal tools for the job, then great; if not, you can take what you've learned and re-implement in Ruby on Rails :)





My only additional piece of advice would be to familiarize yourself with the lower level technologies you are using. Many of these tools nicely and usefully abstract some of these details from you, but they are really worth knowing. An added benefit is that when you understand what your tool is doing for you under the covers, you can more easily switch tools. For example, i'm always surprised how many experienced web developers have fundamental gaps in their knowledge of http, etc.





Good luck!
Reply:thanks man! good luck and send me a preview of your beta site when you get it going! :) Report It

Reply:it is not entirely true. You can develop site in PHP, it is secure and fast to handle such data. ASP.net is in vogue but expensive. PHP being open source, abundant resources are available. You dont need to waste time to learn if you have good idea. Hire any offshore web development team eg http://www.net4gains.com and start.
Reply:ASP.net does not cost money in itself, but it MUST be run on a Microsoft server with .net architecture. This generally costs a bit more to get hosted than an Apache/PHP server, but not too much.





I personally like ASP.net, but PHP is very powerful as well. I have programmed in btoh and in general you can do the same things in both (though I have found sometimes it is a bit more complicaed in PHP). PHP is open source, where ASP is proprietary.





As for WYSIWYG editors, the most popular one for PHP is generally Dreamweaver ( http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweave... ) which costs some money, but is reasonable. And for ASP.net, Visual Studio is the program of choice - though it is quite expensive - A good alternative is Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express which is free and has a complete intellitype library, WYSIWYG capabilities and debugger:


http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/expres...


ASP.net also lets you program in either Visual Basic, or C#.





Both ASP.net and PHP are valuable and powerful languages, you just need to decide which one to focus on (it is smart to be at least somewhat educated in both)
Reply:Both PHP and ASP are very powerful programming languages and learning either of them is a great accomplishment.





I have been writing in ASP because i found it easier to work with, but either would get you what you want.





ASP.net wont cost money (well at least i dont think so)