I’m currently a beginning developer (3 years). I have been mainly doing Web Development for as long as I have been developing. This is my comfort zone when it comes to programming.
I like both JavaScript and PHP because they are easy to use; however, I would really like to further my knowledge when it comes to programming. I’ve been doing some research on many different languages just getting to know the look and feel of other languages.
I like C as it has a similar syntax to JavaScript. I also like Ruby and Java. However, I think I need to learn one at a time. I have decided on Python because of its clean syntax and the fact that a lot of people consider it a good beginner language.
My Problem
I’m coming from languages that are both easy to learn and use (JavaScript and PHP). For example, for JavaScript all you need is:
<script type="text/javascript">
//script here
</script>
And you can execute a script and you can do things such as DOM manipulation.
For PHP all you need is a server that has PHP installed and you can use:
<?php
//script here
?>
You can then just execute it either through AJAX or a request in a form.
I don’t understand how to use Python. I don’t believe you can just do AJAX requests with python files like you can with PHP files. What can I do with Python? Or do I use it? What have you made using it?
1
Python isn’t a web development language by default. You can run CGI scripts manually or you can run something like the Django framework to use it as a server-side language or Brython to use it client side.
It is otherwise a massively flexible language used for everything from games to hard science. Python.org has a much more extensive list.
Be aware that there are two main versions of Python: 2.7 and 3.x. The future is 3.x but many libraries and tools still only work with Python 2.7.
3
Consider using a web framework. I recommend using Django, they have a good tutorial that will guide you step by step through creating an application.
2