During this summer’s Flow School, Flowstar Colin Ford facilitated a blog-writing workshop, encouraging even our non-writers to show off their talents. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing the homework assignments from that session. This is the second of the series.
Learning a new language, whether human or computer linguistics, can be cumbersome, daunting and extremely time-consuming – yet so rewarding in this fast-paced world.
A plethora of programming languages exist, and every one of us is spoiled for choice. Although you have plenty to choose from, it can be tricky to know which language is suitable for you. There are various types of languages, which are categorised as procedural, scripting, database, etc. If you’re into web development, you can get your accelerator pedal geared towards languages such as ASP, PHP, JAVA, Python and Ruby, to mention just a few.
And if your pedal gets stuck, you can either find solutions from our dearly beloved Google or other tech experts. Another option will be to find another programming language that you are comfortable with. After all, some are more comfortable than others with Mandarin, Afrikaans or English.
To add more, contributing your brain cells to the silicon valley can open windows of opportunity in the field of science and math not to mention employment opportunities.
Jumping straight into the two most-used programming languages for the web today, I will examine the arguments for and against choosing one over the other. This is also not an academic debate.
I sense an atmosphere of discontent already as I choose PHP instead of Python and C# over Java as the most prominent programming languages on the Internet today. Whether or not I’m biased, statistics on the W3Techs website suggest that I have identified the trends correctly.
PHP vs C# (ASP.NET)
Learning curve: the learning curve for PHP is shorter compared to its competitor, C#, because the latter has so many libraries that you need to understand before you could say you are confident in using the language. PHP allows easy integration of dynamic pages to a website.
Open source: PHP is freely distributed, while C# is not. It costs an arm and a leg in order to set up a C# development environment.
IDE: C#’s IDE Microsoft visual studio is second to none, as there are so many interesting tools at your disposal as a developer. It offers one of the best package management extension tools, nuGet ,and also web-based installer WPI for easy installation of your development environment.
Error handling: C# is type safe and thus helps in identifying errors quickly, before they are propagated to the production environment.
Where used: C# is mainly used by large corporates, and PHP mainly by NGOs and corporates with low budgets due to its status as an open-source variant.
I am going to stop here as there are so many factors to be examined before choosing a language. Some would argue that Facebook is a PHP project; others would argue they have made it in life because of their C# knowledge.
In conclusion, since you don’t need a computer science background to be proficient in one programming language, I am for the notion that it should be mandatory for everyone to learn at least one programming language. You never know who is going to invent the next big thing.
