On 9/5/07, Sean Corfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 9/5/07, Ali Majdzadeh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > For about 5 years I am using CF as my main devloping laguage but many > > experienced programmers suggested I learn another programming language too > > because CF is great but not as popular as PHP or .Net > > Which one do you suggest as the second language I learn? The only thing I > > ever used is Coldfusion. > > I don't think you'll actually learn anything new from PHP but you may > find it easier to pick up if you've only done CF. I think PHP is a > *horrible* language but a lot of people think I'm a bit of a language > purist (I've designed a couple of languages and written compilers and > interpreters so I probably have a different view of languages to most > folks :)
I agree with Sean. PHP is going to be same-old, same-old with slightly different syntax. The only big pluses I see for you learning PHP is being able to do some open source work and to learn one of the big PHP apps like Drupal (there is MAD money in Drupal development, esp as the political season kicks in) and the big CMSes like Joomla! and Mambo. > C# / .NET will be a good learning experience in terms of new concepts > and it's fairly marketable. Java would also be a similarly good > learning experience (and is also fairly marketable). I'd lean towards Java here since it dovetails nicely with ColdFusion in a lot of ways. I know .NET does now with CF8 as well, but in a CF shop, Java seems to be the next step in many cases. Of course if you hate your current job, .NET might be a good choice to help get out :) > I generally suggest that folks learn new languages for the concepts > they can teach rather than how marketable a specific language is - the > more languages you know, the easier it is to pick up the marketable > languages - and unusual languages teach you a lot more than mainstream > languages, in terms of techniques (many of which will make you a > better CF programmer!). Consequently, I recommend learning unusual > stuff like Smalltalk, Prolog and Haskell... And of course I'd recommend taking a look at Ruby and Rails if you're solidly in the web space. You get a lot of the object-orientation as well as a lot of things you can apply back to CF (frameworks, testing, mixins, etc). Plus its fun :) Regards, John Paul Ashenfelter CTO/Transitionpoint (blog) http://www.ashenfelter.com (email) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Get the answers you are looking for on the ColdFusion Labs Forum direct from active programmers and developers. http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/categories.cfm?forumid-72&catid=648 Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:287819 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
