Software & Application Development

[MrPinkPanther]

But the thing is it's just as easy to understand concepts in a simple language such as Python as it is a web programming language such as PHP and yet the syntax in Python is much closer to your bog standard desktop programming language. Surely it makes no sense learning a web based language when you have no need for it and there are things that will help you more?

I'd actually argue that understanding fundamental concepts is one of the simplest parts of programming since many of them come from things in real life. For example an Array is simply a table which you can use to store elements in. Caleb you say that understanding data types will be difficult and of course it is one of the most complex areas at first but again much of the terminology is common knowledge, we all know what an integer is right? How about a character? How long does it take to tell someone that a String is a characters?

[Dentafrice]

But then again.. how long does it take someone to realize that in C#, a string is..

string blah_blah = "Hello"; 

But yet Java...

String blah = "Hello"; 

One simple capitalization error would throw someone off majorly.

Now.. for someone who hasn't programmed before, he's not going to know when to use each data type... he doesn't have what I call programmers logic yet.. he doesn't know "hey, should I use an int, or a double..."

Is there user POSSIBLY going to input an int.. or what if he inserts a decimal.. and if he does insert a decimal, should I really typecast it?

At the beginning stages of developmental programming, a user should not be concerned with things like this, he doesn't have the skills yet to implement that kind of logic into his program, which is why I recommend PHP first to anyone who ever asks.

You don't have to worry whether or not the user input a decimal into a form field... when you retrieve it from a $_POST, you can simply add them together without converting the string to an int, or typecasting back and forth, or converting...

I just think that the user needs to get the application working, and develop some of this logic before he gets into desktop programming. Just my $0.02, and we can agree to disagree... but whichever route this lad takes is completely up to him.

Both routes are equal, we just believe one is better than the other...