Re: PHP vs Perl

[Travis Owens <openbook@linuxmds.com>]

Ken,

I will not get into the flame war aspect of the
Holy-Programming-Languages Batman!!! sacred thread...

but I will give you my take and experience on your question...

I have used PHP for several years and it's a very powerful, fast, and
fairly easy web language. (notice those last two words) While PHP has
picked up momentum--which furthered use in other areas such as the gui
(gtk-php or something like that, which has nothing to do with the web)
as well as fundamental scripting on the command-line, depending on how
you install php with apache... PHP as a language has not been around as
long as PERL, therefore it's not a fully developed, nor is it used by as
many people. Thus, PERL has more functionality and is more likely to be
used.

I would encourage you to learn both, as is always the slogan, "The right
tool for the job..." However, I would advise you to learn PERL first, as
it is a more complex language offering you a more thorough programming
knowledge and experience, as well as you are much more likely to benefit
from the experience in your future career search.

HTH,
Travis


On Wed, 2004-08-04 at 15:31, Ken Keefe wrote:
> I don't want to start a flame war over this, but I would like to get
> your opinions on this. I just finished a really fat book on Apache 2.0
> and I want to learn some sort of dynamic content language. I am
> currently at a fork in the road and I am considering which path will be
> better for me in the end. So, I'd like to know people's thoughts on PHP
> and Perl. Before I finished this book, I was heading straight for PHP,
> but in the end, the author discusses PHP and Perl and made me doubt my
> choice. The author seems to say that PHP is an excellent tool for folks
> who don't want to get their hands too wet in programming, but Perl is
> much more powerful.
> 
> I personally am not afraid of code, in fact I am more afraid of taking
> the easy way and therefore not knowing what is going on in the
> background. For right now, I want to be able to write message boards,
> account systems, and other web apps that work with MySQL. But I want to
> also prepare myself with skills that will be very valuable commercially
> in the years to come. So, should I keep heading for PHP or should I
> reconsider Perl? 
> 
> 
> Thanks for your thoughts,
> Ken
> 
> 
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-- 
Travis Owens <openbook@linuxmds.com>


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