People sometimes put computer programmers in the same category as brain surgeons and rocket scientists. They believe they are an elite group of brain boxes, and only a chosen few have what it takes to make it.
Well the above probably is true of brain surgery and rocket science, but it certainly isn’t the case with computer programming.
Getting Started
There are an awful lot of resources out there on the net for would-be programmers. But a problem for someone just starting out is ‘What language should I start with?’. Once you have chosen that, you then have to worry about IDE’s (integrated development environments), frameworks, deployment options, methodologies. It’s all just too much!
My Advice
If you want to develop applications for the web, you can’t go far wrong with PHP as a programming language. It’s relatively easy to learn, and is the most widely used across the internet. Match that up with MySQL and you have the ability to create data driven websites.
For an IDE you can use Eclipse. And the cherry on top, for those nice Ajax effects, is Dojo, an Ajax framework.
The best thing about all the above tools is that they are completely free.
A Little Help
We all need a little help from time to time. I have just created a set of Quickstart Video Tutorials which should help you get going. By the end of the series you will have a working web application (albeit a small one). You will need to sign up to get these videos, and I’d be grateful for some feedback on them.
Enjoy!
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