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About the Author
Kevin Yank
Kevin began developing for the Web in 1995 and is a highly respected technical author. He wrote Build your own Database Driven Website using PHP and MySQL, a practical step-by-step guide published by SitePoint, and he's co-author of the SitePoint Tech Times, a bi-weekly newsletter for technically-minded web developers. Kev believes that any good webmaster should have seen at least one episode of MacGyver.
Which Server-Side Language Is Right For You?
The market for server-side Web development solutions is a crowded one, these days! Perl, ASP, PHP, JSP, Cold Fusion and many more specialized choices abound. How is a newcomer supposed to know what to learn and what to use? Choosing a platform with which to build your first major database-driven Web application is nothing like choosing an HTML editor -- you can't just download a half dozen candidates and take them all for a test drive one lazy afternoon. Some of these languages can take an uninitiated Web developer months of work to truly understand and come to use comfortably. Unless you've got time to take a year off and curl up with a pile of books, you're going to need some guidance!
In this article, I'll touch on each of the major options on the 'net today. For each, I'll explain the main selling points, the inevitable drawbacks, the relative costs and the neccessary compromises. I'll also profile the target developer for each of these technologes; that is, I'll shortly explain who they had in mind when the geniuses behind each of these technologies first created them. If any of these profiles remind you of your own situation, that should be a pretty good sign that you've found the right technology.
The choice of a server-side programming language is a constant source of heated debate on the Internet today. Just like HTML editors, everyone has their favorite scripting language and most people have very good reasons for their choices. However, the very nature of server-side development -- that Web browser compatibility is not an issue -- allows for two technologies that tackle the same problem in very different ways to both succeed in equal measure! For this reason, this article is not about deciding which platform is the best of all, but which is best for you. And hey: even if you still can't decide after reading this, or if it turns out you've already made the wrong choice, at least you'll have some idea of what you're up against!