WStoreyII wrote on 27 jun 2004 in comp.lang.javascript:
[Please, do not toppost on usenet !!]
i am sure that you are right about learning new languages and i with
the way things advance now a days its almost invetiable. I did not
mean to say that i wish to not learn to work with both client and
server side programming. What i meant was is there a language that i
can use the same language for both client and serverside programing.
With Javascript you can under ASP, as I said.
As a newbie to the computer world i think it would be easier for me if
had one language that i could concentrate on for all of my programming
needs (ie, desktop applications, client and serverside web
applications).
I do not think so. The scripting of serverside and cliendside pages
already need different scills.
Clientside scripting needs to work ina lot of different client
(=browsers) and operating systems (windows, linux, mac, etc) and
interacts with dynamic DOM and DHTML functions and values.
document.write('hello world');
Serverside scripting, even using the same Javascript, has a lot of quite
different functions, but you can depend on one type and version of your
script engine.
Response.write('hello world');
Programming for your desktop can be done with a script engind (in windows
wscript or cscript) but many tasks are better done with a compiler
language (VB6, etc) or a application script (vba, etc) or a dos-batch.
wscript.echo("hello world")
The language is the same, but the shoptalk slang is essentially different
and closer to the same shoptalk in other languages.
If i could learn how to do it all from one language
and get the basics down then other languages when the need arrives may
be easier.
So start with Javascript [or perhaps vbscript, if you have a history of
Basic programming and do not mind exclusing all non MS-IS Browsers]
The problem is, that you have to leasn by looking at the examples of
others. Serverside ASP can do everything in Javascript [and even more ;-)
with the Jscript dialect of Javascript], but the fast majority of example
scripts on the web are in vbscript, whisch you have to understand and
translate, in you want to get on with those.
To use your anagoly you spoke of speaking other languages.
well a english speaking person could not learn spanish if he does not
have a good grasp on english, he he does nto the teacher would not
have any thing to relate to or base the teaching on.
I do not agree. I was sent to England early in life every year for a week
or so to learn the lingo from cousins overthere and later in secondary
school Latin, Greek, English, French and German were given together.
You were not raised in a computer language from an age where your native
language has come to you, as designed by your language learning genes.
You would not like to speak Spanish by translating every server sentence
just before the output interface with the spanish client [getting back to
computer slang]
So if, for web design and output, you use a IIS server with ASP, learn
both Javascript and VBscript, and a snif of SQL, and you will have your
hands full for the next 5 years without time for making desktop
programmes.
Serverside skills include knowledge of a fast array of protocols.
HTML, CSS, DOM, DHTML, SMIL, XML, WML,
while not languages in sensu strictior,
will need to be part of your clientside talents.
On a linux server PHP would be a near must.
But keeping it simple, even with little [but common-]sense and a lot of
code borrowing, you can make a nice website.
