Need to get into this whole "internet" thing

Basically I don't know anything about networking nor web programming. I want to get into it, what should I start with? Javascript? Java? PHP? Books on networking? Thank you.

Javascript would be a good start, but you will probably get bored with it more quickly than you expect. Java is a good language - the applets are neat.

.NET has some really good web programming abilities, check that out if you have the money to buy one of the compilers (C# or VB.NET).

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Socket programming is incredibly easy in Java and .NET languages.
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PHP - don't know it so I can't comment.

PHP is a little like C, it can be very simple, but it can also become very complicated.

Also, if you know C, you can create add ons to PHP, or even completely redesign it! Don't like something about PHP? Re-make it :D !

If you know c/c++, php will be very very easy for you to pick up. It's really cool what you can do with php, I'd recommend that.

Also, you can just go to php.net and read the basic tutorials. Once you get the handle of what variables, functions, etc look like, you can just refer to the function list on the website and it tells you how to use them. PHP is probably the most important if you want to make a good looking website with the personalized user thingy. Javascript is cool and its not hard to learn.

Yeah, like within the first hour of browsing the php website, I was playing around with using php in conjunction with mysql, making a login script and just little fun things like that.

Any link to any good tutorials would be greatly appreciated.


Also for this php thing I saw that you need to install some sort of a server.....any info.......?

I don't see how JavaScript or Java would help you understand the whole "internet" thing. Get a good networking book. Talk to a system admin or two... there's a lot to networking.

Depends on what you want to do. If you just want to design web space interfaces, start with HTML and then follow up with PHP and Javascript. You can't do much with PHP and Javascript without knowing the markup to display it.

If you want to understand how the internet works, take a course or pick up some books. There is a lot to it and even one course will not cover everything.

i would go for PHP (if you already know HTML). I got bored of Javascript before I really did much with it, and PHP is similar to C/C++...

You have to keep in mind tho, that there are things that PHP cannot do, as it is a server-side only scripting language. You'll find yourself wanting to do stuff on the client side, and for that, you'll need Javascript.

Again, you can't do either without HTML or some other markup language.

then again learning JavaScript, you may find yourself wanting to do server-side stuff too

Very true... that's why I suggested learning both.

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Originally posted by major_small
then again learning JavaScript, you may find yourself wanting to do server-side stuff too

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Then learn JScript.